Importance Of African-American Culture And Heritage In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

Dee does not truly value the heritage, and her interest in the quilts seem to reflect a cultural trend. This cultural trend becomes evident when the mother says, “I had offered Dee a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style”(Walker 96). We learned early in the story that Dee acquired a style at a young age, and she allowed the world around her to alter and manipulate that style.

Alice Walker’s story “Everyday Use” is a story decipating family and heritage. She released the story with a collection of other short stories called In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. This collection revealed Walker to be one of the finest of late twentieth century American short-story writers (Phy-Olsen). According to Cowart, the story address itself “to the dilemma of African Americans who are striving to escape prejudice and poverty.” One of the main characters, Dee, made drastic changes and would like her mother and sister to see things her way. Dee’s statement to her mother and sister regarding their disregard of heritage is very ironic considering the fact her name is a part of the family’s history, her new behavior, and her

Alice Walker is a well-known African- American writer known for published fiction, poetry, and biography. She received a number of awards for many of her publications. One of Walker's best short stories titled "Everyday Use," tells the story of a mother and her two daughters' conflicting ideas about their heritage. The mother narrates the story of the visit by her daughter, Dee. She is an educated woman who now lives in the city, visiting from college. She starts a conflict with the other daughter, Maggie over the possession of the heirloom quilts. Maggie still lives the lifestyle of her ancestors; she deserves the right of the quilts. This story explores heritage by using symbolism of the daughters' actions, family items, and tradition.

Alice Walker is a writer of many powerful short stories, novels, essays and poetry. She used her work to bring black women’s lives to the main focus, such as the rich and important in the US American Literature. In the short story “Everyday Use” written by Alice walker, she showed the conflicts and struggle throughout the African- American culture. “Everyday Use” addresses the dilemma with African Americans, trying to escape prejudice and poverty. The short story “Everyday Use” focuses on the encounter between a mother and her daughters. The setting of the story takes place in the driveway of the mother’s house. The mother and her youngest daughter Maggie wait for her oldest daughter Dee and her male friend to visit from school. Alice

The short story “Everyday Use” was written by Alice Walker and published in 1973. The story is told in first-person by “Mama,” an African-American woman residing in Georgia. Mama lives in a small but comfortable house with her physically scarred younger daughter, Maggie. Mama is preparing for the visit back home of her eldest daughter, Dee. Dee is educated and driven; however, we come to learn that most of her accomplishments come at the cost of her mother and her sister Maggie. Mama’s relationship with Dee is strained, and this creates conflict later in the story. “Everyday Use” depicts the complications between a mother and daughter’s relationship. The story examines the feelings a mother has when she believes she is not needed anymore or respected. Mama’s feelings towards both daughters are illustrated through two of Mama’s character traits, her low-self-esteem and lack of worldliness. However, because Mama has such a strong character and understanding of her family, she undergoes a significant change in her life, which then makes her into a dynamic character.

The quilts are used in the representation of what heritage means to Mama and Maggie versus Dee’s view of them. Mama describes that:

In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, this short story characterizes not only the symbolism of heritage but also shows a difference in human character. The story reveals an African American family who lives in a small home and struggles financially, while it consists of a mother and her two daughters that are treated very differently from their mom. One of the daughter’s name is Dee, a well-educated woman, who struggles to understand her family’s heritage and is embarrassed by her family’s background. Maggie is the other sister who is kind, obedient and manages to appreciate her family. To represent the appreciation she provided for her family, the quilt is described as a powerful symbol to them. The quilts play an important role in depicting symbolism of heritage because they signify mama family origins. For instance, Dee's significant family members all have pieces of their fabric gown on to the quilts as a remembrance of who they were and their importance in the family. However, Dee does not see the quilts her ancestors made as valuable, handmade quilts should be passed down and taken care to keep their history alive. As for Maggie, Dee believes she can’t appreciate the quilt in the same way she can. “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts,” Dee responded. She thinks Maggie will use these quilts, so she can turn them into rags. Despite what Maggie concludes, the quilts for Maggie and mama are meaningful to them, because they were made by members of the Johnson family and have

Alice Walker, a protuberant African American writer from the rural South, understood all too well this idea of “double consciousness”, which she demonstrated in many of her writings. In her short story, “Everyday Use”, Walker makes the African American struggle palpable and brings it into the present by interlacing the double consciousness into characters and settings that investigate the social and personal struggles facing the African American people. In her story, she has three main characters Mama, Dee, and Maggie. Walker incorporates the struggle of being an African American as the centerpiece of her story “Everyday Use.” The author uses Mama, who is unwilling to submit to the expectations of white America and what it must offer. Mama is not in a rush to pick at herself to be accepted into America. The next character Maggie is also not in a rush to grow up and get in line with the rest of society and being a part of the White supremacy that her nation must offer. Finally, Dee, Mama’s oldest is returning from college and does

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.

Alice Walker is an American writer. She was born in Putnam County, Georgia on February 9, 1944. She married Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a lawyer. He is a white man, together they moved to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming the first interracial couple in Mississippi. Walker and Leventhal had a child named Rebecca. They later divorced after nine years of marriage. Her literary works are wonderful, especially her short story, “Everyday Use”. “Everyday Use” features three main characters, Mama, Maggie, and Dee (Wangero). This mother-daughter trio is unique with many differences between them.

Dee has a superficial affinity to the quilts that she wants from Mama. She wants the quilts because of their financial and aesthetic value ("Essay on Quilts and Art in Everyday Use "). She believes that those quilts are “priceless” (Walker, 59). Dee says that she will take good care of them by not putting them into everyday use. According to Dee, the quilts cannot be used every day because they are from the past. She believes that they can only be used for display or decoration. On the other hand, Maggie

The Theme of heritage and how best to honor it in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use.” Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” takes up the recurrent theme of heritage, with the representation of harmony and also the struggles and conflicts that come up with it within culture of African-Americans. The story centers on happenstances between three members of a countryside family headed by a woman. Walker describes the encounter of the liberated and a well-educated daughter Dee, her mama and Maggie, who live a humble and old-style life together. This story concerns the manner different characters understand their heritage about their present life.

As Sam Whitsitt explains, “The quilt represents the female’s side of history and tradition. It binds a culture to its past and the culture’s past to the present and future (445). Sarnowski shows how Mrs. Johnson’s connection to the quilts tells us about her link to her past. She is able to draw the lineage of each slice of material stitched into the quilt (284). Sarnowski’s symbolism of a quilt piece stitched together being parallel to a collection of family members bound together is supported in this passage,” The quilts remain appropriate for “everyday use” so long as the art of their manufacture remains alive.”

The quilts play a big deal in the short story because they are sewed together from past family members clothing. A main theme of the story is how things are used on an everyday basis. The two daughters have a disagreement about how the quilts should be used. Dee who is a successful college student thinks that the hand stitched quilts should be used to display her African-American heritage as wall hangings. To Dee, the quilts would represent an ethnic or historical idea. The author lets the reader question Dee’s genuineness. Dee was offered the quilts before she went away for college but rejected

Most importantly, however, these fragments of the past are not simply representations in the sense of art objects; they are not removed from daily life. What is most crucial about these quilts—and what Dee does not understand—is that they are made up of daily life, from materials that were lived in. This, in essence, is the central point of “Everyday Use”: that the cultivation and maintenance of its heritage are necessary to each social group’s self-identification, but that also this process, in order to succeed, to be real, must be part of people’s use every day. After all, what is culture but what is home to us, just as Mrs. Johnson’s yard is home to