#FeministOrchestra Review: You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down - Alice Walker

I read this for the Feminist Orchestra book club and I must say I didn’t really enjoy it that much. I’m just not that into short stories as a genre, I think. It takes a while for me to get into a story and a short story is just too…, well, short for me to really get into it. 

All the stories of this book are about not only women, but black women, who experience oppression based on gender AND race. I thought this perspective was interesting, but I think I would have been more engrossed if it had been told in one longer story, rather than a burst of short stories. 

I thought most of the stories had an interesting point about either race or gender or both. I think the one that made me think the most was the one about porn. This story tells of a black man who enjoys porn magazines with white women. That makes his (black) wife feel like he doesn’t care for her at all. So he tries to buys magazines with black women, but that doesn’t really help, because while the white women are depicted as less than men, back women are depicted as less than human. The story details how these depictions have an impact on the man and the woman separately and together. The other stories also have interesting points about how people treat other people based on gender and race, but again, I just could’t really get into it in such a short amount of pages. 

I gave this book 2 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. I do think it has some valid points, but personally I just need more time to really get engrossed.