Everyday use
Everyday use is a story was written by Alice walker. Its defining African American
heritage. This story is set in the late 1960s, when were the African American looking for their
rights.
The story describing how was the African and black American life was. The mother and
her daughters Maggie and Dee were a poor family. Usually the yard is a part of house. They are
living in an extended living room, the roof of this room was the elm tree and they call it a yard.
The sisters were listening to each other, and the (no) is a word never learned to say between
each. The mother is not developing herself, she wants to live like her grandma and old family
life. For example, wearing the grandma homemade clothes, and doing hard jobs even she is a
woman. Also here older daughter is almost like her mother, but the youngest did not like this
life because its movement. But the mother gradually rejects the superficial values of her older,
successful daughter in favor of the practical values of her younger, less fortunate daughter.
The grandma of the daughters calls Dee and one of the ladies call Dee too as her
grandma. Young Dee change her name to Wangero, but her mother did not accept it. in
rejecting Wangero, the mother makes a choice to accept it. The mother was aware that
Maggie’s condition is the result of a fire over which she had no control, but she has not
recognized the incredible strength her younger daughter has required, just to survive. Wangero
became successful and she developed herself.
Dee had expresses her fear that Maggie would probably be backward enough to put
them to everyday use. Maggie said “everyday use” of the quilts would be as a reminder of her
grandma Dee.