Sometimes, you've got to ask a question a few times. Especially if the people you're talking to seem bent on stopping their ears with their fingers and humming "La, la, la, la, la."

And the people that Truth was talking to (both her audience and the whole of the U.S. of A) were basically doing just that.

Truth asks her titular question four times. Four. Each question is asked directly after she shares an experience that marks her as equal to both white women and men.

Here's what she said, because we can't repeat her repetitions too often. We're even bolding the questions for you…because they're that important:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. (4) Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! (5) And ain't I a woman? (6) Look at me! (7) Look at my arm! (8) I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! (9) And ain't I a woman? (10) I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! (11) And ain't I a woman? (12) I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! (13) And ain't I a woman? (14)

Each repetition speaks of the frustration, the anger, and the sensation of ramming her head against a wall that Truth must have felt. To be a black woman in 1851 was to be grouped in a sort of no-man's land: she was considered neither delicate and feminine nor logical and masculine.

In fact, we think it's kind of restrained of Sojourner Truth to only ask her famous question four times. It would have been understandable if she had asked it four thousand times.