Comparing Heritage In Everyday Use And A Pair Of Tickets

The Use of Heritage in Everyday Use and A Pair of Tickets A key factor in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” and Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets,” is heritage. Throughout both stories the use of heritage can be seen easily. Walker’s avoidance of heritage in her writings and Tan’s understanding of heritage in her writing. Through this readers can see the true meaning of heritage. Understanding both sides of these two stories gives readers a chance to explore their own heritage and reflect on how they accept their past.

By contrasting the family characters in “Everyday Use,” Walker illustrates lost heritage by placing the significance of heritage solely on material objects. Walker presents Mama and Maggie, the younger daughter, as an example that

By helping and living with Mama, Maggie uses the hand-made items in her life, experiences the life of her ancestors, and learns the history of both, exemplified by Maggie’s knowledge of the hand-made items and the people who made them—a knowledge in which Dee does not possess. Dee attempts to connect with her heritage by taking “picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house. . . She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included” (Walker 74). Therefore showing Dee’s quest for heritage is external, wishing to have these various items in order to display them in her home. She wants these items because she perceives each to have value, as shown in the argument yet again. Mama finally realizes that Dee does not understand her heritage when she says, “This was Maggie’s portion. This was the way she knew God to work” (Walker 77). She allowed Dee to run over her enough, and now she would not allow her foolish behavior to carry on, because heritage needs to be put to everyday use and not just be hung up on a wall for people to see. After Mama gives Maggie the quilts, Dee says, “You just don’t understand Your heritage” (Walker 77). Dee believes heritage to be the quilt on the wall or the churn in the alcove. She knows the

Tan begins her story by describing a feeling that Jing-mei, the narrator, speaks of. She says, “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese” (Tan 120). Tan tells a story within itself giving readers a chance to get to know the character right off the bat and also allowing an understanding of heritage to be brought out. Jing-mei has come to China to trace her Chinese roots which her mother told her she possessed, and to meet her two twin half-sisters whom her mother had to abandon on her attempt to flee from the Japanese. Readers can see that Jing-mei has waited her whole life to connect with her heritage when she says, “. . .I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass me. . . . But today I realize I’ve never really known what it means to be Chinese. I am thirty-six years old. My mother is dead and I am on a train, carrying with me her dreams of coming