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Context Born in rural Eatonton, Georgia, in 1944, Alice Walker was the youngest of eight children. When she was eight years old, she was blinded in one eye by a BB shot by one of her brothers. Although she eventually had surgery on her scar and became valedictorian of her high school, she endured teasing and low self-esteem throughout her childhood. She received a scholarship to Spelman College, a traditionally black college in Georgia, and left home with three things given to her by her mother, Minnie: a sewing machine to encourage self-sufficiency, a suitcase to nudge her curious spirit, and a typewriter to nurture her budding writing talents. Walker eventually left Spelman to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York, from which she graduated in 1965. Walker is a prolific writer, working in a variety of genres including children’s literature, poetry, nonfiction, and screenwriting. She is best known for her novels and short stories, in which she gives voice to a doubly oppressed group: African American women. Her novel The Color Purple (1982) is perhaps her most well-known, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 and inspiring a film adaptation. A tireless crusader on behalf of women, much of Walker’s fiction speaks out against domestic violence, sexual abuse, racism, and genital mutilation, a ritual practiced by several native African cultures. Her concerns differ from ordinary “feminist” concerns, and she calls herself a “womanist,” committed to freeing women from all forms of oppression. Walker’s fiction has been the subject of controversy, because some critics believe she depicts men too harshly (such as in The Color Purple) and criticizes practices that she does

not fully understand (such as genital mutilation, the subject of her 1992 novel Possessing the Secret of Joy). “Everyday Use,” published as part of the short story collection In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973), includes some of the preoccupations that recur in Walker’s later work, such as a focus on women’s lives and the interconnection of the past and present. The stories in this collection take place in settings ranging from Walker’s home territory in the American South to the multicultural world of New York City to the east African nation of Uganda. Walker’s protagonists are portrayed as victims, variously manipulated and used by husbands and lovers, white society, or their own depleted self-esteem. Most of the stories have unhappy endings or cautious resolutions based on quiet, hard-won truths. Critics have seen “Everyday Use” as standing out from the other stories in the collection, partly because of the protagonist’s confidence in defending her family’s legacy. In the time the story is set, the late 1960s or early 1970s, black American life and identity were undergoing a radical transformation. After enduring slavery and the violence and discrimination that came with eventual freedom, African Americans gradually gained civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. A new generation emerged, some eager to break with the horrors of the past and others unable to emerge from the specter of poverty and inequality. “Everyday Use” hinges on the tension created when these two worlds come together. In the story, Walker examines the intense, serious, sometimes militant rhetoric that characterized some strains of the rising black consciousness movement. But she gives her most intense scrutiny to the often tenuous bonds between family members.

Plot Overview Mama decides that she will wait in the yard for her daughter Dee’s arrival. Mama knows that her other daughter, Maggie, will be nervous throughout Dee’s stay, self-conscious of her scars and burn marks and jealous of Dee’s much easier life. Mama fantasizes about reunion scenes on television programs in which a successful daughter embraces the parents who have made her success possible. Sometimes Mama imagines reuniting with Dee in a similar scenario, in a television studio where an amiable host brings out a tearful Dee, who pins orchids on Mama’s dress. Whereas Mama is sheepish about the thought of looking a white man in the eye, Dee is more assertive. Mama’s musing is interrupted by Maggie’s shuffling arrival in the yard. Mama remembers the house fire that happened more than a decade ago, when she carried Maggie, badly burned, out of the house. Dee watched the flames engulf the house she despised. Back then, Mama believed that Dee hated Maggie, until Mama and the community raised enough money to send Dee to school in Augusta. Mama resented the intimidating world of ideas and education that Dee forced on her family on her trips home. Mama never went to school beyond second grade. Maggie can read only in a limited capacity. Mama looks forward to Maggie’s marriage to John Thomas, after which Mama can peacefully relax and sing hymns at home. When Dee arrives, Mama grips Maggie to prevent her from running back into the house. Dee emerges from the car with her boyfriend, Hakim-a-barber. Mama disapproves of the strange man’s presence and is equally disapproving

of Dee’s dress and appearance. Hakim-a-barber greets and tries to hug Maggie, who recoils. Dee gets a camera from the car and takes a few pictures of Mama and Maggie in front of their house. She then puts the camera on the backseat and kisses Mama on the forehead, as Hakim-a-barber awkwardly tries to shake Maggie’s hand. Dee tells her mother that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo to protest being named after the people who have oppressed her. Mama tells Dee that she was in fact named after her Aunt Dicie, who was named after Grandma Dee, who bore the name of her mother as well. Mama struggles with the pronunciation of Dee’s new African name. Dee says she doesn’t have to use the new name, but Mama learns to say it, although she is unable to master Hakim’s name. Mama says that he must be related to the Muslims who live down the road and tend beef cattle and also greet people by saying “Asalamalakim.” Hakim-a-barber says he accepts some of their doctrines but is not into farming or herding. Mama wonders whether Hakim-a-barber and Dee are married. Sitting down to eat, Hakim-a-barber states that he does not eat collard greens or pork. Dee, however, eats heartily, delighted by the fact that the family still uses the benches her father made. Hopping up, she approaches the butter churn in the corner and asks Mama if she can have its top, which had been carved by Uncle Buddy. Dee wants the dasher too, a device with blades used to make butter. Hakim-a-barber asks if Uncle Buddy whittled the “dash” as well, to which Maggie replies that it was Aunt Dee’s first husband, Stash, who made it. Dee praises Maggie’s memory and wraps the items. Mama grips the handle of the dasher, examining the ruts and worn areas made by her relative’s hands.

Dee ransacks the trunk at the foot of Mama’s bed, reappearing with two quilts made by her mother, aunt, and grandmother. The quilts contain small pieces of garments worn by relatives all the way back to the Civil War. Dee asks her mother for the quilts. Mama hears Maggie drop something in the kitchen and then slam the door. Mama suggests that Dee take other quilts, but Dee insists, wanting the ones hand-stitched by her grandmother. Mama gets up and tries to tell Dee more about the garments used to make the quilts, but Dee steps out of reach. Mama reveals that she had promised Maggie the quilts. Dee gasps, arguing that Maggie won’t appreciate the quilts and isn’t smart enough to preserve them. But Mama hopes that Maggie does, indeed, designate the quilts for everyday use. Dee says that the priceless quilts will be destroyed. Mama says that Maggie knows how to quilt and can make more. Maggie shuffles in and, trying to make peace, offers Dee the quilts. When Mama looks at Maggie, she is struck by a strange feeling, similar to the spirit she feels sometimes in church. Impulsively, she hugs Maggie, pulls her into the room, snatches the quilts out of Dee’s hands, and places them in Maggie’s lap. She tells Dee to take one or two of the other quilts. As Dee and Hakim-a-barber leave, Dee informs Mama that Mama does not understand her own heritage. Kissing Maggie, Dee tells her to try and improve herself and that it’s a new day for black Americans. Mama and Maggie watch the car drive off, then sit in the quiet of the yard until bedtime.

Character List Mama - The narrator of the story. Mama describes herself as a big-boned woman with hands that are rough from years of physical labor. She wears overalls and has been both mother and father to her two daughters. Poor and

uneducated, she was not given the opportunity to break out of her rural life. A loving mother, her frank, open nature prevents her from deluding herself when it comes to her daughters’ weaknesses. Mama has a strong understanding of her heritage and won’t allow Dee to take the family quilts. Read an in-depth analysis of Mama.

Maggie - The shy, retiring daughter who lives with Mama. Burned in a house fire as a young girl, Maggie lacks confidence and shuffles when she walks, often fleeing or hanging in the background when there are other people around, unable to make eye contact. She is good-hearted, kind, and dutiful. Rather than anger her intimidating sister, she is willing to let Dee have the quilts that had originally been promised to her. Read an in-depth analysis of Maggie.

Dee - Mama’s older daughter, who has renamed herself Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. Dee wears a brightly colored, yellow-and-orange, ankle-length dress that is inappropriate for the warm weather. Her hair stands up straight on top and is bordered by two long pigtails that hang down in back. Dee is educated, worldly, and deeply determined, not generally allowing her desires to be thwarted. When Mama won’t let her have the quilts to display, she becomes furious. She claims that Mama and Maggie don’t understand their heritage, but she is the one overlooking the important aspects of her family history. Read an in-depth analysis of Dee.

Hakim-a-barber - Dee’s boyfriend or, possibly, husband. Hakim-a-barber is a Black Muslim whom Mama humorously refers to as Asalamalakim, the Arab greeting he offers them, meaning “peace be with you.” An innocuous presence, he is a short and stocky, with waist-length hair and a long, bushy beard. His desire to make a good first impression makes him seem awkward. He makes Maggie uncomfortable by forcing his attention and greetings on her.

Mama Mama, the narrator of the story, is a strong, loving mother who is sometimes threatened and burdened by her daughters, Dee and Maggie. Gentle and stern, her inner monologue offers us a glimpse of the limits of a mother’s unconditional love. Mama is brutally honest and often critical in her assessment of both Dee and Maggie. She harshly describes shy, withering Maggie’s limitations, and Dee provokes an even more pointed evaluation. Mama resents the education, sophistication, and air of superiority that Dee has acquired over the years. Mama fantasizes about reuniting with Dee on a television talk show and about Dee expressing gratitude to Mama for all Mama has done for her. This brief fantasy reveals the distance between the two—and how underappreciated Mama feels. Despite this brief daydream, Mama remains a practical woman with few illusions about how things are.

Just as Dee embraces an alternative persona when she renames herself “Wangero,” Mama rejected a traditional gender role when she worked to raise and provide for her daughters and took on an alternative, masculine persona. She is proud of her hardy nature and ability to butcher hogs and milk cows. In the story, she literally turns her back on the house, the traditionally female

space. She feels that it confines her too much. Despite her willingness to operate outside of conventions, Mama lacks a broad view of the world and is, to some extent, intimidated by Dee. She doesn’t understand Dee’s life, and this failure to understand leads her to distrust Dee. Dee sees her new persona as liberating, whereas Mama sees it as a rejection of her family and her origins. It is not surprising that she names familiar Maggie as the caretaker of the family’s heritage.

Maggie Nervous and maladjusted, Maggie is a figure of purity, uncorrupted by selfishness or complex emotional needs. Severely burned in a house fire when she was a child, her scarred, ugly appearance hides her sympathetic, generous nature. She lives at home and is protected by Mama, remaining virtually untouched by the outside world. As much as her homebound isolation protects her, she is also a victim of this seclusion: she suffers from a crippling shyness and lack of education. Maggie moves with a meek, shuffling gait and hovers awkwardly in doorways rather than getting involved in life around her. Although Mama mentions that Maggie is going to marry John Thomas, it is doubtful that even a marriage will help Maggie become a strong and clearly defined individual. Mama, protective as she is of Maggie, is frank about her shortcomings and problems.

Maggie’s relationship with Dee is rife with jealousy and awe. Mama recalls how Maggie had always thought Dee had been gifted with an easy life in which her hopes and desires were rarely, if ever, frustrated. Maggie seems to have taken both sisters’ difficulties onto her own shoulders, and although she

never says explicitly that she finds it unfair, she clearly thinks so. The only time Maggie reveals the extent of her innermost desires is when Dee attempts to take the quilts that Mama had promised to Maggie. Maggie drops plates in the kitchen and then slams the door, outraged. Later, although she tries to win Dee’s favor by giving up the quilts, her reluctance to do so stirs pity and anger in Mama. Maggie does have a will, and although it is buried deep inside her, it comes through when what she desires most in the world is about to be taken away.

Dee Dee is the object of jealousy, awe, and agitation among her family members, while as an individual she searches for personal meaning and a stronger sense of self. Dee’s judgmental nature has affected Mama and Maggie, and desire for Dee’s approval runs deep in both of them—it even appears in Mama’s daydreams about a televised reunion. However, Dee does not make much of an effort to win the approval of Mama and Maggie. Unflappable, not easily intimidated, and brimming with confidence, Dee comes across as arrogant and insensitive, and Mama sees even her admirable qualities as extreme and annoying. Mama sees Dee’s thirst for knowledge as a provocation, a haughty act through which she asserts her superiority over her mother and sister. Dee is also portrayed as condescending, professing her commitment to visit Mama and Maggie no matter what ramshackle shelter they decide to inhabit. Far from signaling a brand-new Dee or truly being an act of resistance, the new persona, Wangero, comes across as an attentionseeking ploy in keeping with Dee’s usual selfishness. Dee says she is

reclaiming her heritage, but she has actually rejected it more violently than ever before.

Through Dee, Walker challenges individuals—including activists, separatists, or otherwise—who ignore or reject their heritage. These people prefer to connect themselves to an idealized Africa instead of to the lessons and harsh realities that characterized the black experience in America. Dee and Hakima-barber are aligned with the abstract realm of ideology, which contrasts starkly with the earthy, physical, labor-intensive lifestyle of Mama and Maggie. Dee is intrigued by their rustic realism, snapping photographs as though they are subjects of a documentary, and in doing so effectively cuts herself off from her family. Instead of honoring and embracing her roots, Dee looks down on her surroundings, believing herself to be above them.

Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes THE MEANING OF HERITAGE

Angered by what she views as a history of oppression in her family, Dee has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage. However, the new name, like the “African” clothes and jewelry she wears to make a statement, is meaningless. She has little true understanding of Africa, so what she considers her true heritage is actually empty and false. Furthermore, Dee views her real heritage as dead, something of the past,

rather than as a living, ongoing creation. She desires the carved dasher and family quilts, but she sees them as artifacts of a lost time, suitable for display but not for actual, practical use. She has set herself outside her own history, rejecting her real heritage in favor of a constructed one. Mama and Dee have very different ideas about what “heritage” is, and for Mama, the family objects are infused with the presence of the people who made and used them. The family heirlooms are the true tokens of Dee’s identity and origins, but Dee knows little about the past. She misstates the essential facts about how the quilts were made and what fabrics were used to make them, even though she pretends to be deeply connected to this folk tradition. Her desire to hang the quilts, in a museumlike exhibit, suggests that she feels reverence for them but that to her they are essentially foreign, impersonal objects. Mama understands that Maggie, not Dee, should have the quilts, because Maggie will respect them by using them in the way they were intended to be used. When Dee contends at the end of the story that Mama and Maggie do not understand their heritage, Walker intends the remark to be ironic: clearly, it is Dee herself who does not understand her heritage. THE DIVISIVE POWER OF EDUCATION

Although Mama struggled to send Dee to a good school, education proves to be more divisive than beneficial to Dee’s relationship with her family. Mama herself was denied an education. When she was a child, her school was closed, and no one attempted to try to reopen it. Racism, passive acceptance, and forces beyond her control set Mama on the road that led to her life of toil. Dee was fortunate that Mama gave her the opportunity for advantages and refinements, but they have served only to create a wedge between Dee and

the rest of the family. Dee uses her intellect to intimidate others, greeting her mother with “Wa-su-zo Tean-o,” a greeting in an obscure African language Mama most likely doesn’t speak. Dee, with her knowledge and worldliness, is a threat to the simple world Mama and Maggie inhabit, and Dee seems determined to lord her knowledge over them. Even as a child, Dee read to her mother and sister “without pity,” “forcing” strange ideas on them and unsettling their simple domestic contentment. Education has separated Dee from her family, but it has also separated Dee from a true sense of self. With lofty ideals and educational opportunity came a loss of a sense of heritage, background, and identity, which only family can provide. Dee arrives at the family home as a strange, threatening ambassador of a new world, a world that has left Maggie and Mama behind. Civil rights, greater visibility, and zero tolerance for inequality are characteristics of Dee’s world. These things are not, in and of themselves, problematic. What’s problematic is that Dee has no respect for anything but her world, leading her to alienate herself from her roots. Maggie, on the other hand, knows no world but the one she came from. Uneducated, she can read only haltingly. By doing what she is told and accepting the conditions of her sheltered life without question, Maggie has hampered her own self-fulfillment. Walker sets up this contrast to reveal an ironic contradiction: Dee’s voracious quest for knowledge has led to her alienation from her family, while the lack of education has harmed and stifled Maggie. Both education and the lack of it have proven to be dangerous for the sisters. Motifs EYE CONTACT AND EYESIGHT

Throughout the story, the presence or absence of eye contact and strong eyesight re...