Culture In Alice Walker's Everyday Use

Culture is a key aspect of a human that reflects on their lifestyle, family, traditions and pulls together the external influences that play a role in how one chooses to live their life. For me, culture is something you collect throughout your lifetime. In my lifetime, I have been lucky enough to travel outside of the United States and meet people from all over the world. I have seen how people go about their daily routines in many different ways compared to mine. The main cultural influence that has been present in my life since day one is the closeness of my family. All my cousins are very close it has often odd when I hear about families with weak relationships and small size. Another influence that has shaped my behavior was my exposure of extreme poverty and extreme wealth while living in Mexico. Lastly, a cultural influence that has shaped my belief system is my education.

A daughter who uses her mother's gifts in contrast to a daughter who preserves them, is far more valuable just like in “Everyday use” by Alice Walker because heritage values can be preserved. From here on, Walker utilizes a prideful tone which later shifts into an authoritative tone by illustrating a proud mother who becomes defensive because of her modern daughter’s opposing views.

She was admiring everyone’s stylish hairstyles and hair colors. She felt alone and in a place where she does not belong. Suddenly, she came to a conclusion to cut her hair knowing how important Sikh people’s hair are. According to Saluja, “Sikhs do not cut their hair because we believe that to be one with God you must maintain the form that he gave you… Hair is one of the many gifts from God, and we should respect it” (Saluja par. 1). Meeta felt uneasy watching her hair fall to the ground. Three weeks later, she came back home to visit her mother just to watch “her face crumples and turns red” (Kaur 49). She saw a deep disappointment in her mother’s face, thus leaving Meeta swallowing the sob stuck in her throat. At the meantime, a year had passed since my life had shattered. I began showing little to no interest in ceramic making and my father quickly noticed it. We ended up moving to America with three goals in my father’s mind: prosperity, better education, and new experience. Despite of leaving my cousins and friends back in the Philippines, I was somewhat happy to also leave ceramic making and the thought of taking over the family’s business. I told myself, this is where I start a new beginning and new chapter of my life. Little did I know that my father was also thrilled to learn how Americans make ceramics and asked me which ceramic classes I wanted

Culture is a set of ideals and values about life that are widely shared among people and that guide specific behaviors. Differences, as well as similarities, can be seen when comparing world cultures. We communicate with each other, we feed ourselves with food, and when we sleep we often dream. However, we speak different languages, eat different types of foods, and dream different ways. We call these cultural differences. What causes them is not always obvious to the ordinary person (Nancy). I feel culture is what really sets us apart from each other and what makes us unique as individuals and families.

Dee shows that she does not value heritage by changing her name to Wangero. She adopts an African name "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo" and rejects her identity. She tells her mother that the name Dee is dead and that she "couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me". When Dee does speak of her changed name, "it's as if there is not even a tombstone to make the presence of her absence and it is as if her return seems less a return, she appears a curious visitor who has momentarily stopped off a road which began and ends elsewhere". Through heritage, her name was chosen after her aunt and Grandma Dee.

Culture affects people’s perspectives of the world and others through their upbringing and how, when, and where they were raised. In the essay, “An Indian Father’s Plea,” Robert Lake writes about how his Indian child’s traditional way of learning is different from those in western education systems and that he's not a “slow” learner but learns in a different way from his peers. In the personal essay, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee describes her differing views of living in America with her sister, despite both being raised in India. In the poem, “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” by Teresa Palomo Acosta, Teresa how this quilt that her mother made for her involves all these pieces of her past that are stitched together. In the

Immigrants’ refusal to appreciate a fused culture promotes division. Mukherjee questions the idea of immigrants losing their culture for American ideals: “Parents express rage or despair at their U.S.-born children's forgetting of, or indifference to, some aspects of Indian culture,” to that Mukherjee asks, “Is it so terrible that our children are discovering or are inventing homelands for themselves?” (Mukherjee, 1997, para. 28). Many immigrants experience anger when their children no longer hold the ideals of their home country. This tension produced within the household hinders the unity within a resident country’s culture and encourages division within families. Using herself as an example, Mukherjee provides another instance of anger directed at her from her own subculture: “They direct their rage at me because, by becoming a U.S.

In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”, Walker juxtaposes two different daughters in their quest for a cultural identity. The narrator, their mother, talks about how each daughter is different; Dee went off to college and became well-educated, contrary to their impoverished and low status as black women in the south. Meanwhile, Maggie isn’t nearly as educated as Dee is, but is still literate. The entire story centers around Dee’s visit with her new Muslim significant other. The story’s climax is when Dee wants to take two special quilts back home, but those quilts are for Maggie. These precious quilts comprise their culture. Henceforth, Dee does not deserve to take the quilts with her because she has decided to take on a culture that varies significantly from her own and she is already used to getting what she wants.

Yet, with time it shows that the culture they have influenced their life in one way or another. The text states,“Two Ways to Belong in America,” where sister Bharati will soon realize how American culture influenced her decisions. Bharati writes, “I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousands of years of ‘pure culture’...” (Mukherjee 71). Bharati had given up her personal culture in order to fit into and be accepted another culture.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Throughout life people are typically taught that knowledge is power. They are encouraged to attend Higher Learning educational institutions in order to pursue a better future. In the short story “Everyday use” by Alice Walker, she depicts that Heritage can be interpreted in different ways; experimentally and academically. Walker’s story implies that learning one’s Heritage is crucial. Dee, the daughter in the story, shows a better understanding of her Heritage with the knowledge she gained from her college experience.

In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston uses talk-stories to illustrate the necessity of finding one’s voice or identity when trapped between the expectations of two clashing cultures. In “No Name Woman,” Kingston has difficulty with sorting fact from fiction in her mother’s talk-stories, and “[separating] what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, [her] mother who marked [her] growing with stories, from(...) Chinese tradition and [the] movies” (5-6). Kingston grows up in a world she only knows through her mother, who “marked [her] growing with stories,” creating a world for Kingston which she can only dream about. She struggles to ascertain the difference between Chinese culture and “the movies,” because the only

Like Dee’s clothing, Dee changing her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo demonstrates “her fascination with Africanism but she has a lack of concern for her family heritage” (Korenman 146). Dee does not see in front of her that her real name Dee is actually from her family roots and that her name can be traced back to her family from the Civil War. It shows that Dee is ignorant for not realising that she is already connected to her real roots through her name and that she does not have to change her name to feel like she has truly embraced her real heritage. According to Sam Whitsitt, Dee has clearly disconnected herself with her true name and that “he return seems less a return than a passing by; she appears a curious visitor who has momentarily stopped off a road which began and ends elsewhere” (448). This proves that Dee is now a stranger to her real family because when she changed her name it meant that she has started a new life with a new identity.

This difference between educational achievements between family members presents a conflict, as Dee, now Wangero, wants to embrace more of her African roots, while her mother, while perplexed to begin with, and comes to accept it (Walker 318). This culminates in where Dee (Wangero) wants quilts made by her ancestors

Indian-Americans ranging from ages 16-24 that are first generation Americans undergo the stages of minority identity development. They are commonly placed in environments which force them to question their own identity. As they communicate with peers, they question themselves and their personal beliefs and customs. Occasionally, they view the majority culture as better than their own and may develop negative feelings of their Indian household upbringing. One may feel the need to internalize the values of the dominant culture of the community and change to fit the status quo. This is especially difficult for Indian-Americans because so many things that they are taught within the home are not normal for the majority culture therefore presenting a major division and causing an uproar in the home. Parents tend to view “normal” majority culture attributes as