Alice Walker Heritage

The short story “Everyday Use” was written by Alice Walker in 1973. This story was one of her best and was included in her collection In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. Like most of her stories, this one too was about African American culture and their heritage. Heritage is one of the most important factors that represents where a person came from. “Everyday Use” shows how the characters view their heritage in different ways. The narrator of the story is Mama. Mama tells the story through her eyes about her and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee. Dee is different from Mama and Maggie. She is ashamed of the way Mama and Maggie have chosen to live and like the finer things in life. Mama and Maggie are simple women. Mama describes herself as “a large, big boned woman with rough, man working hands” (Walker). She wishes she could be what Dee

Dee does not realize that Mama had offered the same quilts to her when she went off to college. Dee referred to the quilts back then as old-fashioned and out of style. Now that the quilts have become fashionable art objects to be hung for decoration, she wants them. These quilts are full of heritage. They were hand stitched by Grandma Dee and made from old dresses that she had worn and old clothes that her mother had passed down to her. Dee does not realize that these quilts are made up of everyday life, from materials that have been 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” (Velazquez). Dee did not want Maggie to have the quilts because she would put them to everyday use. Although, that is what quilts are made for. Dee does not realize that heritage is part of what people do and use every