Kya has been abandoned in the North Carolina marsh as a 6 year old. She will be labeled the "Marsh Girl" by others in the town. She learns to survive on her own.
Tate is a friend and comes to visit with her and teaches her how to read and write.
She is always writing things about the birds, grasses, mushrooms, etc in her environment. The walls of her shack are covered with her collectings. Tate claims to love her and tells her that he is going to college, but he stands her up for his last meeting with her before that happens. This makes her feel very alone.
She then meets Chase, who is the town's football quarterback, but gets used by him. He seems to believe that it is OK to visit and "play" with Kya, saying he wants to marry her and build her a house. Chase is then found dead. The sheriff is looking for answers and comes to the conclusion that Kya is probably the suspect.

This is less of a murder mystery than touted. This is really a story about Kya and all that life throws her. ( )

This collection of short stories by Alice Walker were terribly disappointing. I checked the book out from my library as I was interested in the story, “The Abortion,” but I also read the other stories as well.

Overall, the stories were about black people being black, not being people. The stories were full of racism, sex-crazed women, pornography, and were misogynistic. These portrayals only further fuel the stereotypical black person. And the author is black. Shame on her. She should be elevating her characters above these images instead of putting them down.

The writing was poor as well. In several stories I noted numerous POV shifts from first person to third person and back to first person, often in the same paragraph. Unfortunately, a waste of time. ( )

3.5/5 ( )

You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker was a good book. This book included several short stories about oppressed African American women who took their individual circumstances and ran with them in a positive way. The first story "Nineteen Fifty-Five" was about a women who sang like no other; she sold her a song she wrote a white man for a young white male to sing the song. They made a deal. Exchange of the song he would pay her. After the time pass she realized although she was not recognized for her talent “singer/song writer” she was okay. She was humble. I would recommend others to read it, but if you read it look for the deeper meaning besides the ink printed on the pages.

From the RABCK-box that CC sent me, 'just because'. Look forward to read this book :-)

Reserved this book for a fellow BC'er that also takes part in the wishlist tagging game.

An now I have read it, it is time for a review. Although, that a hard thing to do, because this book has many short stories. I won't write about all. Just say some general things about the book and which story I liked best.

To start with the latter: I liked the first one best: Nineteen Fifty-five. I think it came closest to what my imagination can handle about the subjects.

The stories are all about black women in the fifties / sixties of the 20th century. The lived in different circumstances, their stories were very different, but the basic facts of feminism, black women, very different time in a country that doesn't look like what we are presented nowadays are the same. And I think that are just the reasons why I did not like the book very much, found it hard to read.

The way of speech / write was different than what I am used to, strange words, strange way of writing like the main characters were speaking, that came on top of the above. ( )