A True Story is an essay by Mark Twain that is, as the title implies a true story. It was written in 1847 and can be found in the book Sketches, Old and New. It is one of a number of stories that Mark Twain wrote about race and racism and of those stories that I have read this is the most direct of those stories and one that I really enjoy.
A True Story by Mark Twain is one of my favorite pieces of his writing and while I have not read all, or even a majority of his written work I would stand by this as an excellent example of the character, personality and writing ability of the real man rather than the persona and in fact the only real weakness of this
...story is the false persona of Mark Twain as I expected, throughout the story for there to be some type of Joke or twist no matter how out of place that would have been and the fact that he was willing and able to tell this story so well without the humor that he interjects in nearly everything makes it clear that this was not some minor story to him but a very important point and one that deserves to be remembered even a hundred a forty ears later. The story takes place at a small farmhouse. The narrator is watching a sixty year old black woman being chastised and taking it all in good humor hardly seeming upset by it at all. The man is impressed by the woman's attitude and commends how he had never seen her
anything but happy and tells her that saying how good her life must have been. The woman then tells her the story which is the core of this.
That story is one that really does explain why nothing that happens to her now is going to upset her. She was a slave in the past and during that time her four children were taken from her and gone for many years and the reason that she is so happy is that after so many years she has finally been reunited with one of her children. I suspect that any of us who had went through even some of what this woman had would be miserable and yet he is able to show her as a person who has risen above the condition of her life and is able to see the good, but more importantly for the time he shows her as a person and that was something that was very important.
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