for brilliant answer

The value and preservation of culture and heritage of African Americans serve as

the cornerstone theme expressed by Alice Walker in her short story, “Everyday Use.”

The story seeks to show the importance of having an identity and a sense of belonging

in a particular society. As a result, Alice uses the story of a woman and her two children.

The value of culture and heritage plus its significance in the society is demonstrated by

the mother, Mama, and the daughter's Maggie and Dee. The story’s events took place in

the 1960s. It is the period where some black nationalists’ movements started to take

shape. The story is narrated from the mama’s standpoint since she looks at how DEE

joins the black nationalist and Maggie’s perception of their cultural origin. A clear line of

difference is seen between these two girls' outlook on their heritage and culture.

According to Dee, heritage is a thing of the past. The first main idea here is that

Dee rejected her real heritage for a broader, yet limited, cultural ideal. It is through

aestheticization and nostalgia that distance the past from the present (it implies

changing the form of something to another thing like maybe a piece of art and thus

removing some of its significance). We see Dee neglecting some of the family’s heritage

and culture. As a result, while on the farm with her mother and her sister, she disdains

their continued use of family heirlooms, as well as their ancestral house. Maggie says,

“No doubt when Dee sees it, she will want to tear it down.” Dee expresses her

displeasure towards this immediate past, and after joining college, she started

abandoning her home, as well as lack of interest in learning the family skill of sewing.

Funny thing, she started admiring an African heritage which she shallowly knows about,

one that came before her family ancestry in the United States plus the history

enslavement. By referring herself “Wangero” an African name, she started living to their

heritage and culture where she started changing her mode of dressing and hairstyle.

When she became an adult and returned home, she started behaving like Africans who

distance themselves from the immediate past. She started taking everything of their

family’s past as imaginary where she started keeping photographs of the house and

family, changing them into artistic images and goes on to take family heirloom – she

well used butter, and her hand sewed grandmother’s quilt to use them as house

artifacts and decorations. She did not want to live with her family who glorifies the past

while she sees them as memorabilia with no true meaning to her present real life.

The theory of double consciousness among black Americans is Dee herself.

Generally, this distanced and imagined Walker criticizes the view of heritage. She

delineates Dee's curious, aestheticized vision of her family there as yet living traditions

as chilly, elitist, and terrible Dee ask Walker, “what, after all, am I? Am I an American?”

This makes her mom to dislike her for attempting to get their way of life immovably

before, and Dee's ugliness in this respect can be found in the manner in which she

snickers at and looks down on Maggie for her appreciation of the family ancestry. In

addition, Walker recommends that Dee's perspective on heritage is misinformed and

ignorant. For example, Dee accepts that she is named after white "oppressors," when in

reality, she is named after her beloved Aunt Dicie.

Mama dismisses Dee’s idealized perspective on heritage by declining to give the

blankets to Dee and opted to connect with the family history that is alive and that which

will continue to develop. “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts,” Maggie says

to her mom. It is this explanation that prompts her mom to remove the blankets from

Dee and hand them to Maggie because Maggie comprehends their history and worth

quite a lot more profoundly than Dee does. Mother and Maggie have no advanced

education or information on Africa, yet they do value their progressively immediate

roots: their home, their family treasures, their customs. Maggie would put the quilts

Dee perceives as a show of artistry as “ordinary use” objects where she uses them as

bed covers according to their original destined purpose. Since Dee abandoned their

family sewing skills, Maggie learned from her grandmother intending to maintain and

preserve their family heritage and customs.

Dee's appreciation for items in Mama's home as artifacts of her heritage is

similarly misguided. she said “Hang them. As if that was the only thing you could do with

quilts.” However, one might think that having Dee exposed to education and knowledge

about African roots, makes it quite difficult for Mama and Maggie to drop and separate

from their family history making their connection with immediate past more natural and

critical than Dee.

To summarize, Walker utilizes imagery, character change and improvement to

pass on her feelings concerning culture and heritage. Her viewpoints about these two

ideas point towards the importance of maintaining and respecting the rich worth of

family and customs. The symbols of runs, butter churns, quilts and the benches are a

portrayal of the history of African Americans. Likewise, they are things that happen in

the everyday existences of these individuals, which further fortify the significance of

protecting individuals' history.

References

Christian, B. T. (1994). Alice Walker:" Everyday Use. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

UP.