Respecting Heritage and No Discrimination

Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," is a story about a poor, African-American family and a conflict about the word "heritage." In this short story, the word "heritage" has two meanings. One meaning for the word "heritage" represents family items, thoughts, and traditions passed down through the years. The other meaning for the word "heritage" represents the African-American culture.

In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker stresses the importance of heritage. She employs various ways to reveal many aspects of heritage that are otherwise hard to be noticed.

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).

Mama understands the past and the significance of a family heritage. Her heritage including her memories of her mother and grandma making quilts together by hands.

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

Racism has not just gone away there are still people out there thinking there are only certain things white people can do and certain things only black people can do. Or some people that think the world is owed to them because of their skin color, or they are superior because of their skin color. It has never stopped because as a society we have done nothing about it and made it a common thing. A good example would be, in To Kill a Mockingbird when Calpurnia brought the children to church Lula got upset about it. “Lula stopped, but she said, “You ain’t got no business briging’ whit chillun her-they got their church, we got our’n. It is our church ain’t it, Miss Cal?”(Lee) Things like that still happen today just not as extreme people separate themselves in some cases due to race and that is one thing that needs to be worked on.

Heritage has an influential role in every individual’s life. “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a short story that portrays two sisters’ from a poor African American home and their conflicting views on the value and meaning of heritage. Maggie, the younger sister, is uneducated but truly appreciates where she comes from. Dee, the oldest sister, is an educated college student but her she has a warped idea of heritage. Alice Walker uses the characters, point of view and symbolism to develop the main theme of heritage.

According to The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2015), heritage is defined as, “traditions, achievements, beliefs, etc., that are part of the history of a group or nation” (“Heritage”). Heritage takes on mixed meanings for different people as a consequence of life experiences and belief systems. Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” utilizes characters with varying ideas of “heritage” to enlighten the world of the issues inside the African American community. The short story “Everyday Use” was written in 1973 at the end of the Civil Rights Era and beginning of the age of freedom; it embodies the struggle within a family to differentiate between authentic American traditions and new age notions of African history. Walker uses juxtaposing lead characters to symbolize the contrast between true, folk legacy and Dee’s romanticized idea of heritage. “Everyday Use” distinguishes the conflicting opinions of three African American women, and how they each express their own philosophies of family heritage.

People need to raise their children and teach them that just because someone’s hair color, eye color, skin color, etc. is different it doesn’t make them any different from them. All kids should know that everybody is equal and that nobody is ant better that the next person, no matter the situation. I can only hope and pray that people will realize that everyone is equal and that nobody is better than anyone else for the sake of everyone’s future, but I know that deep down inside racism will forever exist all over the world.

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.

Everyone inherits something during life, whether it be money from a recently deceased relative or physical features from parents. Throughout the poem “Heritage” by Linda Hogan, the narrator remembers all the traits and lessons that she has garnered from her kin. A superficial reader of the poem might assume that the narrator is simply reflecting on said traits and lessons, but in reality she is actually attempting to illuminate and reconcile the differences in her life.

Since the beginning of time, there has been racism. People are afraid of difference and are used to the ordinary. Racism became a worldwide problem in America especially, after they imported slaves from Africa. Even after a long fight for equality of all skin colours, racism was still present. Racism will never stop. It will keep going on and on till the day the world ends. The reasons why it is never going to end are people’s upbringings, media, and stereotypes. No one is born racist; it is the world around them that forms their opinions.

When the mother snatched the quilt out of Dee's hands and gave them to Maggie, (Walker, 255) the author's argument became clear. The author wants heritage to be defined as how Maggie defines it: to live the heritage and put the quilt to everyday use. The author's definition of the word heritage is necessary in order to see the theme behind the short story which is to live and immerse in heritage, and this could not have been understood without the difference in definitions of heritage between Maggie and

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," the message about the preservation of heritage, specifically African-American heritage, is very clear. It is obvious that Walker believes that a person's heritage should be a living, dynamic part of the culture from which it arose and not a frozen timepiece only to be observed from a distance. There are two main approaches to heritage preservation depicted by the characters in this story. The narrator, a middle-aged African-American woman, and her youngest daughter Maggie, are in agreement with Walker. To them, their family heritage is everything around them that is involved in their everyday lives and everything that was involved in the lives of their ancestors. To