Everyday Use by Alice Walker

...

If Dee were more involved with her family she would know the worth of the items she tried to take from her mothers home. She never cared to contribute to them or to even learn about them yet believed she had a right to take them home and genuinely got upset when Mama wanted Maggie to have the quilts that Maggie worked hard on. Dee says that Maggie doesn’t understand her heritage (68) yet it seems that she is the one who doesn’t understand or appreciate her own culture.

Education plays a large roll in this story. Education is the reason Dee left her family, it is also the reason she alienated herself from her family. Mama struggled to send Dee away to Augusta yet Dee doesn’t seem to appreciate the hard work her mother went through to send her there. She bashes her family history when she was given opportunities they never had. Not only did Dee’s family not receive an education thus causing a riff between them and Dee but it also caused Dee to loose sight of her true culture.

Dee confuses the idea of culture and heritage. By actively pursuing her ancestors she losses her sense of culture, identity and her family ties. Education plays an active roll in pushing Dee away from her family. Her family is rich with culture one she wishes to ignore for the ideas of someone else that she has learned to believe as her own. Although Mama is torn between her two daughters and the times they represent she chooses Maggie and the culture she knows. Culture impacts their own identities more than anything else and without their culture they would be completely different. Racial discrimination impacts the daughters and their relationships with their mother. Mama represents the desire for equality and freedom through Dee but the desire to preserve traditional African American culture through Maggie.

Works Cited

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use”. Douglas College Karen Thomson. (2015): 65-68.