Preserving Family Traditions and Cultural Legacies:
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Individual Identity
In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” the conflict between a desire for personal fulfillment and the need to honor one’s tradition is dramatized in the conflict shown between two daughters, Maggie and Dee. Maggie has never had a desire to leave home and seems content to live with her mother. Mama is a woman who has grown up poor, tough, but also very deferential to white people, because of the profound societal injustices she has endured. “Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way is farthest from them” (Walker 1). In contrast, her other daughter Dee is brave, goes away to college, and seems to have a confidence her sister lacks. But this comes at the cost of a break with Dee’s family. Even when Dee comes back to show appreciation for the African-American traditions she spurned in high school, she regards them as objects to be displayed for social esteem, rather than values their everyday use. However, it is important not to generalize Dee’s experience for all people, particularly today, where it has become easier for people to negotiate blended identities.
It is true that overall, the Walker story does not paint a very hopeful picture of the ability to preserve cultural traditions and move forward in society, despite the fact that this is in many ways the American Dream. Dee initially views her family tradition and cultural legacy as something that inhibits the full expression of her sense of self. Once she loses this sense, she can never regain it, even though she tries to do so by framing her ancestors’ quilts. It is Maggie who retains the ability to make more quilts, despite the fact she is unlikely...
By simply concentrating on connecting with their African heritage many failed to understand that their parents and their ancestors who lived on the American continent in general created a culture of their own that entailed elements belonging both to the African continent and to the American one. Most of the short story is about how Dee struggles to find her personal identity by turning to cultural values. While Dee is
Alice Walker The Image of the Quilt: Alice Walker's the Color Purple and "Everyday Use" What makes us who we are? A large part of our current lives are derived from the lives of those who came before us. Our family traditions and heritages are an important part of ourselves. In Alice Walker's The Color Purple and "Everyday Use," cloth, quilts, and the act of sewing are highlighted as a way
After reading the short story, “Everyday Use”, one can get the impression that educational backgrounds can affect the way an individual will grow up. The narrator’s education did not go far because in second grade, because her school closed. Therefore, she grew up working instead of learning to be able to take care of herself and her children. On the other hand, her daughter, Dee, grew up with education and went
While she away, she changes her name to "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo" (1425) because she will not endure "being named after the people who oppress me" (1425). She is concerned with herself and she seems to only come home to take things back with her, including things like a butter dish and dasher. When she decides she wants the quilts, she sees no reason why she should not have them,
Alice Walker Themes and Characterization in the short story "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker American literature of the 20th century was known for its subsistence to ideologies that have proliferated for years, as society responded to act upon the continuing oppression and inequality that some sectors of the society still experience even during the period of modernism and social progress. One of these oppressed sectors of the society is the black
Smith & Walker Both Smith and Walker who write about the plight of black people and the feelings of inevitability and racism can invoke in Black people and in their lives. A significant difference between the poem and the short story is the generation and age of the individuals. Whereas Walker's short story is concerned with the racism and pain experienced by an elderly African-American woman in the post-civil rights
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