diff --git a/manilaclient/utils.py b/manilaclient/utils.py
index dac055eb8..f89dc9cde 100644
--- a/manilaclient/utils.py
+++ b/manilaclient/utils.py
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ def get_function_name(func):
 
 def _encode(src):
     """remove extra 'u' in PY2."""
-    if six.PY2 and isinstance(src, unicode):
+    if six.PY2 and isinstance(src, six.text_type):
         return src.encode('utf-8')
     return src