Feminist Perspectives of African-American Women: An Analysis of Alice Walker’s You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down

Abstract

This Paper examines Feminist Perspectives of African-American Women, using Alice Walker’s You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down. The aim of the paper is to analyse how Alice Walker has utilized the ingredients of her ideology in You Can‘t Keep a Good Woman Down to showcase the triumph of her main female characters over oppressions of diverse facets in the racial American society., African-American women have had to battle with not just oppression from white males and females, they have had to also battle oppression from their own black men owing to how their society has negatively shaped the family life. They have been exploited sexually, politically, economically and talent-wise amongst others. Over time, Alice Walker felt the situations and experiences of black women were not adequately covered by Black Feminism, hence, she coined Womanist Ideology; calling it an extension of Black Feminism. Essentially, the paint brush of her womanist theory colours about all the fourteen stories in such a manner that about all her main female characters in the stories emerged triumphant over battles they fought against racism, sexism or machinations amongst others. This paper thus, discusses Alice Walker’s womanist ideology as she catalogues triumphant African-American women in the fourteen short stories as contained in her You Can‘t Keep a Good Woman Down. The theoretical framework used for this study is black feminism and the method used is narrative method. The study finds out that some men are considered as misfits therefore women should be empowered to live their lives freely no matter what it takes. There is also the finding of the approval of lestianism, pornography among others as legal practices.