In 1843, after Matthias's experimental community had failed, Truth left New York and traveled through Long Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, singing and speaking out about public and religious issues. By 1832, she had come under the influence of the self-styled utopian prophet, Matthias, whom she helped to support with her savings and labor. Moving to New York City, she became involved in Evangelical religious and moral reform activities and began preaching at camp-meetings around the city. The children she bore as a slave were taken from her, and it was her successful efforts to reclaim her son, Peter, who had been illegally sold out of state, that brought her into contact with anti-slavery advocates. In it, she tells of her early life in slavery and how she did not officially achieve freedom until 1827, under New York State's Anti- Slavery Act. This work includes several important texts about her life, beginning with a dictated autobiography. Sojourner Truth (1795-1883) was originally a Dutch-speaking slave in Hurley, New York (Ulster County) who became one of the nineteenth century's most eloquent voices for the causes of anti-slavery and women's rights. Sojourner Truth's narrative and Book of life Narrative of Sojourner Truth a bondswoman of olden time, emancipated by the New York Legislature in the early part of the present century with a history of her labors and correspondence drawn from her 'Book of life.'.

The book of life sojourner truth