When Dee, an intelligent young African-American woman, visits her childhood home in the Deep South, the story’s first-person narrator, Mama, explains her relationship with Dee. As Maggie and Mama, Dee’s sister and Mama’s younger daughter, get ready for the visit, the story begins. Maggie dresses into a new outfit as Mama speculates about making up with her child on a Johnny Carson-hosted talk show. Then, because Mama doesn’t think she is the individual who would participate in such a show, she discounts her fantasy as ridiculous. This story is based on an exciting time when the African American population looked to gain fair rights and freedom. This paper aims to closely analyze “Everyday Use” regarding the historical concept, themes, and significant literal attributes in the book.
The Historical Context of the Story
“Everyday Use” takes place in the turbulent late 1960s through early 1970s, when several African Americans were battling to reevaluate and take control of their cultural, social, and political identities in American society. A significant attempt was to acknowledge African Americans’ commitments to America’s lengthy legacy. At that time, academics and the general public developed an interest in locating and revisiting African American history. They were especially interested in the elements of African history that had persisted in African American culture despite centuries of slavery (Walker). Therefore, many black people at the time wanted to become an identifiable, cohesive group and control the names given to their race. This fact is depicted in Walker’s story, “Everyday Use.”
“Everyday Use” takes place during a time when organizations of diverse ideologies—some peaceful, others militant—emerged. Black Muslims and the Black Panthers were formed to oppose what they perceived as a white-dominated civilization. Dee is modeling her style after the artists, writers, and cultural nationalists who promoted the growth of black culture as a method of advancing freedom and equality while wearing flowing robes and sandals (Edmondson 4). It is vivid that Walker intended Hakim-a-barber to appeal to this new, younger, and more militant youth. Hakim disparages the hard-working Muslims who reside down the road, as Mama describes their way of life (Walker). He refuses to devote himself to the challenging task of the purpose and religion he claims to believe in, which is Islam.
Significance of the Author’s Yard and House
Most of the story is majorly based on the main character’s yard. Therefore, she does not waste time introducing the location to the listener. She addresses the audience immediately, saying, “A backyard like this is more relaxing than most people know. Not just a yard, either. It resembles a large living room” (Walker). The astute narrator is not only giving literature students a description of the story’s environment.
The narrator does not, however, entirely romanticize the setting. She notes in a later passage of the novel that her home has “no true windows, just little holes cut in the sidewalls, like the portholes on a ship, but still not round and also not square, with rawhide keeping the shutters open on the outside” (Walker). The viewer can reasonably infer from this depiction the financial struggles the storyteller and her children have experienced. In terms of the overall picture, it is not easy to pinpoint precisely where in the globe this story takes place (Walker). The fact that the house is situated in a meadow and the narrator’s statement that she earned funds to send Dee to college in Augusta serves as the only actual hints. Therefore, if one had to lay a wager, one would probably predict that the novel is set in rural Georgia rather than Paris, France.
The Theme of Heritage
Dee has created a new ancestry and discarded her genuine lineage since she feels her family has a history of tyranny. She adopts a new identity, Wangero, which she feels better reflects her African background because she cannot recognize her given name’s family lineage. The new name, however, is meaningless, just like the “African” attire and accessories she chooses to wear to make a statement (Walker). She believes her authentic heritage is hollow and phony because she has little real grasp of Africa. Dee also believes that her true heritage is a dead thing from the past rather than a living, evolving thing. Although she wants the engraved dasher and the family quilts, she views them as relics from a bygone era that are best shown rather than put to actual, helpful use. She has distanced herself from her past by eschewing her ancestry in preference for a made-up one. Dee and Mama have pretty different notions about what constitutes “legacy,” According to Mama, family heirlooms bear the imprint of the individuals who created and used them.
The actual markers of Dee’s identity and lineage are the family heirlooms, but Dee has little knowledge of the past. Even though she claims to have a solid connection to this folk practice, she makes false statements regarding the basic details of how the quilts were constructed and what materials were employed to make them (Elmore). Mama is aware that Maggie should own the quilts rather than Dee since Maggie will treat them with respect by using them as they were designed to be used (Walker). Walker means the comment to be ironic when Dee claims after the tale that Maggie and Mama do not comprehend their background because it is evident that Dee herself does not understand her heritage.
The Theme of Education
Even though Mama worked hard to get Dee into a decent school, Dee’s family relationships are affected. Mama herself was not allowed to go to school. Her school was shut down as she was a baby, and nobody tried to get it reopened. Mama was put on the path that led to her lifetime of labor by passive acceptance, racism, and external influences. Mama provided Dee the chance for privileges and refinements, which she was fortunate to have, but they have only served to drive a chasm between Dee and the family members. Dee greets her mother in an exotic African language that Mama most likely doesn’t speak with the words “Wa-su-zo Tean-o,” demonstrating how she utilizes her intelligence to scare others (Walker). Dee challenges Mama and Maggie’s modest existence because of her education and worldliness, and she appears intent on ruling over them with her wisdom.
Even as a young child, Dee interprets her mother and sister as “without pity,” “pushing” unusual ideas upon them and upsetting their uncomplicated family tranquility (Walker). Dee’s education has cut her apart from her relatives, yet it has also taken her away from her genuine self (Elmore). There was a loss of the sense of history, background, and identity that only family can supply, along with lofty objectives and educated opportunities. Dee shows up at the family’s home as a weird, menacing representative of a modern paradigm that has rendered Maggie and Mama alone.
Unfortunately, Dee has cut herself off from her roots because she has little regard for anything outside her realm. Maggie, on the contrary hand, is only familiar with her home world. She is uneducated and has shaky reading skills. Maggie’s self-fulfillment has been limited by her unwillingness to challenge the rules of her sheltered upbringing and her willingness to do what she is told. Walker uses this contrast to highlight an ironic inconsistency: Maggie’s lack of training has hurt and restricted her. In contrast, Dee’s thirst for information has caused her to become estranged from her family (Walker). For the sisters, education and a lack of it have been dangerous.
Symbolism of Quilts
The emphasis of “Everyday Use” is on the connections between women of all ages and their lasting legacy, represented by the quilts they create together. Although there is a strong relationship between the generations, Dee’s arrival and ignorance of her past reveal that such ties are also frail. The connection between Dee and Maggie, sisters who barely speak to one another and have little in common, and Aunt Dicie and Mama, the seasoned sewists who produced the quilts, is highly dissimilar from that of these sisters (Pinzon). Dee is unable to understand the value of the quilts, which include patches of clothing that were once donned or possessed by at least a century’s worth of forebears, much as she is unable to comprehend the heritage of her name, which has been passed down through four generations.
The quilts are artifacts of living history; they are textile records of the experiences of various generations, including hardships like war and poverty. The quilts are evidence of a family’s proud and complicated past. Mama views her family history as one of her precious valuables because of the constraints that poverty and illiteracy placed on her life. The artisanal creations of her large family are displayed in her home (Walker). Mama has been granted the quilts by her relatives rather than a monetary inheritance. Although Dee claims to want to take care of and maintain the quilts, she cannot comprehend the value that she places on these items.
Significant Quote
A famous phrase in the text is stated, ‘She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe and burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily need to know (Walker). Mama uses these phrases to recall Dee’s early years when she returned from boarding academy in Augusta, Massachusetts, with a head full of knowledge and rule over Maggie and Mama. Dee’s education inspires dread and intimidation in Mama instead of pride in her daughter’s brains and accomplishments. Knowledge is portrayed as a dangerous and unwanted presence that jeopardizes the household’s security, simplicity, and stability, much as the fire that ravaged the family’s earlier home. Dee alienates and rejects her family through education, which causes conflict among the family. Knowledge also provokes Mama by making her think about the chances and exposure she was deprived of. The idea that education is a destructive force that hurts people by exposing them to environments they will never truly belong is laced with negative connotations. Some people suffer pain or exclusion due to their attempt to learn, and they are condemned to live like Maggie, hanging humbly in a house where she will not be allowed to enter and cut off from the power to change. This menace is as genuine and unwelcome to Mama as a fire raging through the rafters. “Everyday Use” is a story that vividly showcases the life of African Americans before their rights were recognized. The author explains her life, from when she is growing up to the time she has to raise her children.
Works Cited
Edmondson, Delaney. “In Our Mothers’ Quilts: How Womanism Connects the Quilts of Gee’s Bend with Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” and “Everyday Use.” Merge vol. 4, no.1, 2020, p. 4.
Elmore, Raheem Terrell Rashawn. “Cultural Trauma’s Influence on Representations of African American Identity in Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use.’” Etd.ohiolink.edu, 2019, Web.
Pinzon, Alexis. “How Literary Study Advances Belonging: The Prevalence of Colorism through Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use.’” Academic Festival, 2021, Web.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Harper’s Magazine, 1973, Web.