A Guide to “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker

Everyday Use is a short story by American author Alice Walker. It was first published in her 1973 short story collection In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. The story is representative of much of Walker’s work that dealt with the lives of African-American women and the issues faced by them. In particular, it captures the relationship between a mother and her two daughters in the shifting atmosphere brought about by the Civil Rights movement. 

Alice Walker is one of America’s predominant writers on inequalities caused by discriminations based on race and gender. Born in the South in 1944, she attended college in the early 1960s, during the heights of the Civil Rights movement, in which she soon became involved. It was also during this time that her work began to be published and her writing career took off. Her most well-known novel The Color Purple was published in 1983 and won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—the first awarded to an African-American woman. Her work continues to serve as a powerful voice for Black women in America and beyond.

A Summary of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

The story is narrated in the first person by an older Black woman whose name is never revealed but who is referred to as “Mama.” She is preparing for a visit from her older daughter, Dee, and has cleaned and spruced up her small rural home. She lives with her younger daughter, Maggie.

Dee is introduced as the successful child of the family, and in the narrator’s eyes, Dee’s progress is such that she envisions a reunion with her daughter on a popular reality TV show, likely hosted by Johnny Carson. She imagines Dee would be overjoyed to see her mother (whose appearance would also be very different and much more glamorous than the reality) and attribute all her success to her mother’s sacrifices.

The story Everyday Use revolves around a young woman returning home for a visit, during the course of which three starkly different African-American women are fleshed out.

Day dream aside, however, the narrator also acknowledges the far-fetchedness of the idea as she knows her own self. In appearance, she is hardy, with a body that is the result of hard work and hard living conditions. She also understands that in spite of being tough, she does not have in her to be able to look a white man in the eye, as the TV show host would be.

Maggie’s appearance prompts Mama to ruminate on the differences between her two daughters and to recall an important incident in their past. Where Dee is outspoken and relatively independent, Maggie is shy and inexperienced. Physically, too, the two sisters do not look alike. Dee is beautiful, while Maggie is marred by scars, which add to her retiring nature.

Maggie was scarred in a fire that burnt down their old house. The narrator recalls carrying Maggie out of the burning structure and the terror with which her younger daughter had then watched the fire’s progress. On the other hand, she believes that she saw in Dee glee and pleasure as she watched the destruction; Dee did not seem to have been satisfied with her impoverished environment. The narrator also suspects that Dee did not like her sister. 

As they grew older, the sisters displayed differences in the field of academics as well. Dee learned to read quickly and read aloud to her mother and sister frequently. And even though Mama did not appreciate much being told of other people’s lives and ideas, she and her church  collected money and contributed to Dee’s education. 

Maggie, too, learned to read but not as well as Dee. She also appears to have a problem with her eyesight. Maggie’s nature reminds the narrator of her own self at that age. Like Maggie, the generation she grew up in did not think to question authority, even when that authority shut down her school when she was in the second grade, thereby depriving her of an education. 

Maggie may not be intellectually sharp, but she is good-natured. This guarantees to the narrator that a boy, John Thomas, will marry Maggie and take her off her mother’s hands. Maggie clearly gets along with most people. Dee, on the other hand, did not. She was too clever for the local community and, according to Mama, did not have many friends during the time she lived at home. Those who did seek her out appeared to have been struck by her intelligence and colorful nature. But her then-boyfriend, Jimmy T, did not stick with Dee long and eventually married a girl very unlike her.

The differences between the two sisters extend in every direction - from their appearance to their natures and the types of lives they choose to live.

When Dee finally does arrive, she has on “a dress so loud it hurts my eyes” and is accompanied by a strange man, whose appearance also disconcerts Mama. She is unable to pronounce his name, too, and is eventually told to call him Hakim-a-barber, leading to her wonder if he is a barber (he is not). Meanwhile, Dee herself has changed her own name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo.” She explains this as an attempt to distance herself from the people who she sees as her oppressors and the names they bestowed. Mama does not  understand this, telling Wangero that “Dee” is, in fact, a family name and was passed to her by her aunt. It has been in the family since the Civil War. 

Wangero and her companion arrived in a car and brought with them a camera. She takes several shots of her mother and sister with the house they now live in, and after an awkward first meeting between the man and Mama and Maggie, the group goes in for a meal. Hakim-a-barber rejects the prepared collard greens and pork, causing the narrator to remark that he must be a Muslim, like a family that lives down the road. He confirms that he is a Muslim but is not a farmer like them. Dee/Wangero, however, relishes the food. The relationship between her and Hakim is not clear, and the narrator wonders if they are married. 

Throughout the meal and after, Dee/Wangero gushes over various objects and pieces of furniture in the house that are old enough to be dented by use. They had been carved by her father and uncles. She requests her mother to be allowed to take away with her some of these items, such as the top of a milk churn. Her purpose in taking them with her seems to be to use them as objects for display. Mama may not be happy with this, but she relents.

After the meal is over, Dee/Wangero brings out from a trunk two quilts that she also wants to take. These, she knows, were stitched over a long period of time by her grandmother, her mother, and her aunt. She recognizes old scraps of cloth included in it, one even dating all the way back to the Civil War. She sees it as a piece of historical art that she intends to preserve.

At this, however, Mama puts her foot down. She had saved those for Maggie’s wedding and does not want Dee/Wangero to take them. She asks Dee to select some of the other quilts, but Dee/Wangero argues that Maggie will not know their value and put them to everyday use. Dee, on the other hand, is intent on preserving them as heritage items.

At this point, Maggie comes in from the kitchen and meekly tells her mother that she doesn’t mind if her sister takes the quilt. But her mother is adamant that Maggie has those quilts. She had saved them for Maggies, and they carry an added emotional value for her: her grandmother and her aunt had taught her how to quilt. Mama takes them from Dee/Wangero and tells her to take two of the other quilts.

Dee/Wangero then turns away in a huff. Her and Hakim prepare to leave. Just before they drive off, Dee/Wangero tells Maggie that she ought to leave home herself, see and experience the changing world, and make something of herself. 

After the couple’s departure, Mama and Maggie relax, sitting outside the house until it is time for bed.

Characters in Everyday Use

Mama: Everyday Use has been narrated in the first person from Mama’s point of view. It is through her eyes that the readers are introduced to the rest of the characters and watch Dee’s visit unfold. 

Physically, she describes herself as “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands.” She is capable of performing and, in fact, has performed tasks that would widely be considered masculine, such as slaughtering a calf and hanging its meat up to dry. She is clearly used to a hard life, and her appearance bears proof of it. 

Mama is an African-American woman who has lived most of her life in the pre-Civil Rights movement period of American history. The end of the Civil War may have brought emancipation for the countries’ slaves, but it did not succeed in producing the requisite changes in the attitudes of the country’s citizenry and, many times, even its governments. The Black population across America continued to face discrimination and inequality, and this had an immense financial impact on them. Whether they moved to the big cities or remained in rural towns and villages, a large section of the African-American population languished in poverty. Such is clearly the case with Mama, who chose to live in rural America. 

She grew up used to the authority assumed by white men and rarely thought to question it. Even as she is tough, used to hard and difficult labor, she is subservient and accepting of her conditions. At the same time, she has set views and opinions shaped by her experiences in life and her confidence in herself. However, she also displays an ability to tolerate attitudes and opinions that are different from hers. This is evident in her attempts to address her older daughter by her newly adopted name, and her quick permission allowing the latter to take various objects from around the house.

Mama is a representation of several African-American women who lived in conditions similar to hers.

Mama is also a dutiful and caring mother. Even though she finds Dee’s attitude strange, even disliking it, she ensures that Dee is educated. She also looks out for Maggie, standing up to Dee at the end of the story, and stopping her from taking quilts that were part of Maggie’s dowry and which had a personal emotional value for her. 

Dee/Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo: Dee is an individualistic character, unusual in a community that is tightly bound together by a collective memory of pain and suffering. This part of her nature was revealed early on during her childhood. She is opinionated and not afraid to show it. Her intelligence allows her to quickly learn to read, giving her access to worlds far beyond the rural one chosen by her family. She disliked her poverty-ridden surroundings and dreamt of something more. Her confidence and aspiration were viewed by those around her as arrogance. 

Dee is beautiful and had quickly developed a sense of fashion and style that she strove to express. Her independent nature made it difficult for her to make friends, but Mama recalls that she did have people to spend time with. However, these were less friends and more “followers” held in sway by her character, a hold that did not last long.

Dee is enamored by the Civil Rights movement, the changes it brought about, and the powerful new image it produced of Black men and women.

After moving away, Dee clearly becomes influenced by the Civil Rights movement. She has come in contact with new ideas of Black pride and is clearly impressed by them: she changes her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, a name much more African than “Dee” which is now, to her, a reminder of the oppression of her ancestors. Previously disdainful of the environment she was brought up in, she now finds in it objects that represent to her and the larger world African-American heritage and art. And even as she continues to see her mother and sister as backward, she fails to recognize the irony when she declares everyday objects around their house as art which should no longer be subject to everyday use; rather, they should be preserved instead. 

Maggie: Maggie is Mama’s younger daughter and is the complete opposite of her sister. Where Dee is confident and brash, Maggie is subdued and timid. She continues to live with her mother and is soon to be married to John Thomas, a boy with “mossy teeth in an earnest face.”

Maggie is scarred—the result of a fire that burnt her old house down—which is partly a cause of  her severe shyness. She is nervous about her appearance and attempts to hide herself from Dee and the rest of the world. Not venturing outside has fed back into her skittishness, and she defers to her mother on almost all matters. 

Maggie is also not as intelligent as her sister and struggles to read, probably due to her poor eyesight as much as the fact that she is not as fluent with it. However, she has made peace with her shortcomings and has a good nature. She is also good with her hands, having learned quilting from her grandmother and aunt, and has a good memory; she is able to recall without any trouble who made what object in her house.

Maggie also displays an open heartedness that is missing in her older sister: when Dee throws a tantrum about wanting to take away the two quilts that had been set aside especially for Maggie, she is willing to part with them. This is in spite of being evidently upset when Dee first brought the matter up.

Maggie is content with the life she lives and appears to be happy to follow in the footsteps of her mother, isolated from the political and cultural shifts taking place in America.

At the end of the story Dee advises Maggie to leave and explore the changing world and to use new opportunities to make something of herself. However, her relaxation with Mama after Dee’s departure indicates that Maggie does not feel the need to take her sister’s advice, as she is content with her current place in life. 

Hakim-a-barber: He is Dee’s companion on her visit home, but the nature of their relationship is unclear. They appear to be a couple, but Mama wonders if they are married. 

Everything about Hakim draws Mama’s displeasure, as he is strange to her in every way—from his appearance to his dietary preferences (he rejects her collard greens and pork, dishes that are deeply traditional to the African-American community). 

Hakim is a Muslim, likely converting to the religion of Islam under the influence of Black pride leaders like Malcolm X, who saw Christianity as the enforced religion of the white man. They preferred to return to what they believed had been the religion of their ancestors, the slaves captured and shipped to America from Africa.

Analysis of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

The short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker paints a nuanced picture of the state of the African-American community during the 1960s. The Civil Rights movement was sweeping the nation and was the frequent subject of headlines. 

Black people in America had lived with incomplete equality for decades. In spite of the Emancipation Proclamation, the attitudes of the American white majority had remained unchanged, whether in the North or in the South. The South, especially, egregiously propagated inequality, codifying discrimination into state law (Jim Crow laws). Segregation of public spaces on the basis of race was common. 

This state of affairs began to change in the 1950s with the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. With growing momentum, the unfair treatment of African-Americans began to receive widespread coverage in the media even as several leaders rose up from the community. The ideas of black power and black pride grabbed hold of the public imagination as well. Black leaders and academics dug into the forgotten and overshadowed histories and culture of their ancestors in Africa to build up an alternate image of their people; an image that was not dominated by the spectre of slavery and their supposed inferiority. Instead, they now had a new reflecting pool of rich and powerful cultures to see themselves in.

A major factor driving the movement and the ideas accompanying it was education and exposure received in large cities. The rural settings in which several African-Americans still lived were not sites ideal for the fomenting of such ideas. How, then, would they have experienced the changes that their urban counterparts were living through? This is a question that Everyday Use tackles. It gives readers a look at two divergent views of life as Dee comes to visit her mother and sister. 

Told from the mother’s point of view, it gives the reader an inside look at the mind of a Black woman who has lived her entire life in hardship and under subjugation. Being accustomed to it, she does not necessarily see it as grave injustice and unfairness, rather it is a fact of life for her; she has adjusted to it. Denied education when her school shut down during her second grade (she did not ask why, didn’t think to), she lacks the intellectual advantages it might have offered her—most importantly, the ability to question those who exerted power over her circumstances. 

While more than capable of handling the labor demanded of her, Mama is simple, a feature that is also evident in her diffident younger daughter, Maggie. Her older daughter, Dee, on the other hand is not so. Her sharp mind and individualism keeps her unsatisfied with the state of affairs while growing up, urging her to leave home as soon as she can. This is clear to Mama, and while it may not please her, she accepts this difference in her daughter and even works to enable the latter to achieve her desires.

On the other hand, Dee, while intelligent, lacks her mother’s nature. Exposed to new ideas, she begins to see at least the objects of her childhood differently. Where she was earlier contemptuous, she now believes that they are the heritage of her community. However, she still lacks true appreciation for them and the value they have for those who crafted them with their own hands, and the reasons they did so. In fact, while she is high on the liberating power of new ideas rooted in history, she is unable to care for the very real people who are an important living part of that history and culture.

The quilts Dee, now Wangero, wants to take away with her are an important symbol of African-American history and culture. They have taken a long while to make and have been pieced together with several scraps of cloth accumulated over the years. They also include bits dating back to the Civil War. This fact, in particular, elevates them in Dee’s mind—they are a part of her heritage and should be preserved and hung up, not used. However, quilts are utilitarian objects; they were stitched with the purpose of being used regularly, and they contain old scraps not to make them historically valuable but because it is practical. Dee completely misses this point. 

She also overlooks the emotional significance of the quilts and how that adds to the heritage contained in the quilts. A community is made up of the people in it, and their feelings for each other are a crucial element of what holds them together. While practical, the quilts are significant for Maggie as they were stitched by her grandmother and aunt, who also passed on the skill to her. She may even have contributed to their making herself while she was learning. By showing herself as unable to understand such subtleties, Dee reveals that she continues to be individualistic while believing that she is a part of a collective cause.

Exposure to new ideas in the urban spaces Dee chose to move to made her see the objects of her childhood differently. However, it did not change the way she saw her childhood itself, the people she grew up around, and the value they infused into the objects she is now fascinated with.

Her brashness and disrespect cause Mama to run out of patience and ultimately deny Dee’s demands for the quilts. This clash is likely representative of several such conflicts taking place in homes where the environment outside is undergoing drastic changes. 

On the other hand, Dee’s learning, experiences, and call for preservation of heritage are not invalid. She is still young and has much to learn. Her education, and that of several others like her, will eventually lead to an upliftment of the African-American community as a whole.

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