Dee In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

     Dee believes she is more cultured than her family. She may have more knowledge about different cultures and religions that she learned in school, but she does not know as much about the family heritage as she thinks she does. For example, when Dee changes her name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo” she destroys important links to her heritage that she will never understand. Her mother tries to explain to her that her name is significant because it belonged to particular beloved ones. However, Dee seems to reject the names of her ancestors, yet she is eager to seize their handmade goods. When Dee realizes she is not going obtain possession of the quilts, she storms out of the house without saying a word. It is apparent that the only reason for her visit is to get the family heirlooms, not to see the house, her mother, or Maggie.

     In this story, Dee is completely unappreciative. One can get the feeling that the mother in the story had worked long and hard rearing her daughters, and has even gotten Dee into college somehow. Dee returns with her college education and new personality trying to preach to her mother and sister about what they are doing wrong. Plenty of times Dee spoke down to her mother and little sister, Maggie.

Dee on the other hand, represents more of a modern, complex, materialistic way of life. She moves to the city to become educated. She is ashamed of where she comes from. In a letter mama receives, Dee writes “no matter where we ‘choose’ to live, she will manage to come see us” (Walker 281). Furthermore, when she comes home to visit she tells mama that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo because “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker 282).

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a short story about the family relationship between a mother and her spoiled daughter. The mother, who is affectionately called “Mama” throughout the story, lives with her younger daughter, Maggie. The older child is Dee, who has not lived at home since she was sent to Augusta to school. She is preoccupied with advancing her social status and acquiring nice things. “Dee wanted nice things. A yellow Organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit…” (Walker,492). The story revolves around Dee’s visit to see Mama and Maggie, an event which obviously does not happen often. Dee only seems to visit the family in order to claim items that Mama has not yet given to her children. As usual, Mama allows Dee to come inside the home and take whatever she wants. Yet, the relationship between Mama and Dee is a complicated one. Others may say that their relationship is strained because Dee burned their first house down. However, there is no direct proof that Dee is responsible for the fire. Their relationship is contentious and uneasy because Dee is very selfish, she wants to advance her life without considering others, mainly Maggie, and she resents that Mama is satisfied with a simple life.

Dee, from Walker’s “Everyday Use,” is Mama’s older daughter who not only has a judgmental, insensitive attitude towards Mama and her younger sister Maggie, but also believes she appreciates her family heritage more than Mama does, when in fact, Dee is the one who is “uneducated” and lacks an understanding about what her heritage truly is.

The African heritage plays a major role in the story, “Everyday Use”. Alice Walker emphasizes the meaning of heritage by having Dee come visit her family and contradicting her heritage. As Dee go off to college, she meets new people and finds her a boyfriend, Asalamalakim. Alice Walker adds attention onto Dee’s new name, Wangero, because Dee changes her name, not understanding the true root of her original name. “No, mama,’ she says. ‘Not Dee, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!’ ‘What happened to ‘Dee’?’ I wanted to know. ‘She’s dead…” (160). However, Dee truly believes that her heritage lies way back to Africa. The African clothes and name gives an understanding that Dee thinks that she is from Africa and that is where her heritage originally lies. In addition, Mama and Dee have different point of views on what heritage truly is. Mama tells Wangero (Dee) that her name comes from a line of ancestors, yet Wangero believes that her new name has more roots in it. “You know as well as me you were named after your aunt Dicie,’ I said. Dicie is my sister. She named Dee. We

Dee's inability to accept who she is can be seen as a weakness. Dee has turned her back on a part of her past by taking the Muslim name of "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo" (412). Her reason for changing her name was because she "couldn't bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me" (412). Her mother sees the action of the name change as Dee turning her back on her immediate blood relatives. Dee's insecurity concerning her past becomes evident, and her mother sees it as a denial of where she came from. It is as though she would rather claim the name of an unknown slave to that of her aunt and grandmother. Her biggest fear seems to be that by not declaring her heritage, she might someday have to return to the simple life of her mother and sister. Dee uses the

“Everyday Use” demonstrates real life struggles during the period is was written and published (1973), by using historical criticism, we can see that people are often disconnected due to their education. Alice Walker successfully shows the disconnection of heritage value by having one character well-educated and young, and another character who was not able to get an education and is much older. Taking the historical context, plays a major role in the way this short story is viewed. It was a time where people of color had a different and difficult experiences getting an education. The narrator was talking about not being able to get an education, so it was important her daughter get an education; The narrator wanted to be on a television show with her daughters to demonstrate how successful she became. However Dee the narrator's daughter sees her mother and Maggie her sister differently as if they do not know how to appreciate things for their valuable history. One example is, when she wanted the quilts that were suppose to go to Maggie; Dee gets upset that she cannot have them and her mother does not understand why she wants to put them on display.

To clarify, Walker’s narrative focuses on two classes of people: one lower and one higher. In general, Mama and Maggie represent a class that only appreciates practicality, whereas Dee and Hakim-a-barber represent a class that places more value on artistic interest. For example, when Mama asks Dee why she would rather be called Wangero, she explains that “[she] couldn 't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress [her]," (Walker). In effect, Dee’s new and dramatically different name exemplifies how serious she is about defining her identity with her new culture as opposed to remaining in the same culture as her Mama. In other words, Dee has taken the sole purpose of having a name, identity, and added a symbolism to it of her defiance. In another instance, when Dee sees her family’s butter churn, her

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.

Although the story "Everyday Use" is narrated from Mama's point of view, Alice Walker reveals Dee, Mama's eldest daughter, to be the central character. Dee remains essentially unchanged throughout the story. Even though Dee achieves her aim by overcoming complications such as poverty and racial discrimination, she is not admirable for her achievements and courage. Walker describes her to be selfish and self-centered, a woman who remains unchanged from her childhood to the current position after several years. The disregard for her sister's pain, ingratitude for the money raised for her education, and the desire for quilts indicates her static behavior.

She now seems to be embracing and acknowledging her African roots and disowning her actual family heritage. Upon returning home, Mama, the protagonist, learns that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. This is the first her Mama has heard of this and it causes her to question Dee’s motive for doing so. After all, it appears Dee was named in the family tradition and to Dee’s Mama, her name is symbolic and seems to be a way of recognizing and honoring the women in the family by naming a baby girl of a later generation after their elders. Dee was named after her Mama’s sister, Dicie, who was named after her Grandma Dee, who was named after her mother. (Kirsner and Mandell, 2012, pg. 348). However, to Dee, her name is a symbol of oppression and humiliation and denotes things that she has come to believe are beneath her and her new status in life. She is now a beautiful, educated, and sophisticated woman, who is proud of her newly made self. She now seems to have renounced her past, completely missing the fact that it is her past and her heritage that played an important part of shaping her to be the woman she has become (“Characterization and Symbolism,”

Dee?s character in the story is a direct relation to any number of people in society that do not know or are confused about their heritage. She is struggling to create an identity for herself, and is confused as to what it encompasses. She grasps at African tradition and culture, yet fails to acknowledge her own African American culture. This happened all over America, particularly in the North, in the 1960?s, following the civil rights movement. Dee is misconstruing her heritage as material goods, as opposed to her ancestor?s habits and way of life. This may be due in part to her leaving her hometown and becoming an educated, sophisticated young woman. Dee?s direct heritage is that of African Americans.

In the short story“Everyday Use”, the character Dee has made a cultural transformation from her African-American culture to a more African culture. For example, when her mother calls her name, she responds with, "Not 'Dee,' Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo [...] I [can’t be] named after the people who oppress me." In actuality, her mother named her after her grandmother Dee. This story’s setting is during a time that is of a lower degree than the 1800s slavery era. Dee arrives at her mother’s house with a different cultural clothing clothing as evidenced by her mother’s description,“A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun [...]. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her armpits.” Dee is not a true African person she is African-American. Discovering Bristol explains, “[A] culture, formed by Africans in the Americas, was a mix of the cultures and beliefs of the different ethnic groups, sometimes adding in European and Christian ideas.” Her African roots were removed when generations and generations before her were coerced to assimilate into a more African-American culture by the enforcement of slavery. The quilts are a true meaning of African-American culture, not African culture.

When Dee comes back to visit her family she makes herself an outcast. Dee greets her family with a language that they are not familiar with. She wants things from her “past” life to decorate her house with. Dee distances herself further by changing her name. Dee believes that her name is a way of tying her self to the “people who oppress” her (2440) instead of thinking about her family’s history with that name. She claims that Dee is dead and her new name was Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. Dee’s beliefs are also shallow. Her and her boyfriend Hakim-a-barber are supposed to be Muslim but when mama makes food with pork she gobbles it down.