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Analysis of Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 24, 2021

Probably Alice Walker ’s most frequently anthologized story, “Everyday Use” first appeared in Walker’s collection In Love and Trouble: Stories by Black Women. Walker explores in this story a divisive issue for African Americans, one that has concerned a number of writers, Lorraine Hansberry, for instance, in her play Raisin in the Sun (1959). The issue is generational as well as cultural: In leaving home and embracing their African heritage, must adults turn their backs on their African-American background and their more traditional family members? The issue, while specifically African-American, can also be viewed as a universal one in terms of modern youth who fail to understand the values of their ancestry and of their immediate family. Walker also raises the question of naming, a complicated one for African Americans, whose ancestors were named by slaveholders.

The first-person narrator of the story is Mrs. Johnson, mother of two daughters, Maggie and Dicie, nicknamed Dee. Addressing the readers as “you,” she draws us directly into the story while she and Maggie await a visit from Dee. With deft strokes, Walker has Mrs. Johnson reveal essential information about herself and her daughters. She realistically describes herself as a big-boned, slow-tongued woman with no education and a talent for hard work and outdoor chores. When their house burned down some 12 years previous, Maggie was severely burned. Comparing Maggie to a wounded animal, her mother explains that she thinks of herself as unattractive and slow-witted, yet she is good-natured too, and preparing to marry John Thomas, an honest local man. Dee, on the other hand, attractive, educated, and self-confident, has left her home (of which she was ashamed) to forge a new and successful life.

Alice Walker/Thoughtco

When she appears, garbed in African attire, along with her long-haired friend, Asalamalakim, Dee informs her family that her new name is Wangero Leewanika Kemanio . When she explains that she can no longer bear to use the name given to her by the whites who oppressed her, her mother tries to explain that she was named for her aunt, and that the name Dicie harkens back to pre–CIVIL WAR days. Dee’s failure to honor her own family history continues in her gentrified appropriation of her mother’s butter dish and churn, both of which have a history, but both of which Dee views as quaint artifacts that she can display in her home. When Dee asks for her grandmother’s quilts, however, Mrs. Johnson speaks up: Although Maggie is willing to let Dee have them because, with her goodness and fine memory, she needs no quilts to help her remember Grandma Dee, her mother announces firmly that she intends them as a wedding gift for Maggie. Mrs. Johnson approvingly tells Dee that Maggie will put them to “everyday use” rather than hanging them on a wall.

Dee leaves in a huff, telling Maggie she ought to make something of herself. With her departure, peace returns to the house, and Mrs. Johnson and Maggie sit comfortably together, enjoying each other’s company. Although readers can sympathize with Dee’s desire to improve her own situation and to feel pride in her African heritage, Walker also makes clear that in rejecting the African-American part of that heritage, she loses a great deal. Her mother and sister, despite the lack of the success that Dee enjoys, understand the significance of family. One hopes that the next child will not feel the need to choose one side or the other but will confidently embrace both.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” In Major Writers of Short Fiction: Stories and Commentary, edited by Ann Charters. Boston: St. Martin’s, 1993, 1,282–1,299.

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An Analysis of 'Everyday Use' by Alice Walker

Appreciation, Heritage, and the Generosity of Effort

• Short Stories
• Best Sellers
• Classic Literature
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• Shakespeare
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• Ph.D., English, State University of New York at Albany
• B.A., English, Brown University

American writer and activist Alice Walker is best known for her novel " The Color Purple ," which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. But she has written numerous other novels, stories, poems, and essays.

Her short story "Everyday Use" originally appeared in her 1973 collection, "In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women," and it has been widely anthologized since.

The Plot of 'Everyday Use'

The story is narrated in the first-person point of view by a mother who lives with her shy and unattractive daughter Maggie, who was scarred in a house fire as a child. They are nervously waiting for a visit from Maggie's sister Dee, to whom life has always come easy.

Dee and her companion boyfriend arrive with bold, unfamiliar clothing and hairstyles, greeting Maggie and the narrator with Muslim and African phrases. Dee announces that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, saying that she couldn't stand to use a name from oppressors. This decision hurts her mother, who named her after a lineage of family members.

Claims Family Heirlooms

During the visit, Dee lays claim to certain family heirlooms, such as the top and dasher of a butter churn, whittled by relatives. But unlike Maggie, who uses the butter churn to make butter, Dee wants to treat them like antiques or artwork.

Dee also tries to claim some handmade quilts, and she fully assumes she'll be able to have them because she's the only one who can "appreciate" them. The mother informs Dee that she has already promised the quilts to Maggie, and also intends for the quilts to be used, not simply admired. Maggie says Dee can have them, but the mother takes the quilts out of Dee's hands and gives them to Maggie.

Chides Mother

Dee then leaves, chiding the mother for not understanding her own heritage and encouraging Maggie to "make something of yourself." After Dee is gone, Maggie and the narrator relax contentedly in the backyard.

The Heritage of Lived Experience

Dee insists that Maggie is incapable of appreciating the quilts. She exclaims, horrified, "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use." For Dee, heritage is a curiosity to be looked at—something to put on display for others to observe, as well: She plans to use the churn top and dasher as decorative items in her home, and she intends to hang the quilts on the wall "[a]s if that was the only thing you could do with quilts."

Treats Family Members Oddly

She even treats her own family members as curiosities, taking numerous photos of them. The narrator also tells us, "She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house."

What Dee fails to understand is that the heritage of the items she covets comes precisely from their "everyday use"—their relation to the lived experience of the people who've used them.

The narrator describes the dasher as follows:

"You didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood."

Communal Family History

Part of the beauty of the object is that it has been so frequently used, and by so many hands in the family, suggesting a communal family history that Dee seems unaware of.

The quilts, made from scraps of clothing and sewn by multiple hands, epitomize this "lived experience." They even include a small scrap from "Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War ," which reveals that members of Dee's family were working against "the people who oppress[ed]" them long before Dee decided to change her name.

Knows When to Quit

Unlike Dee, Maggie actually knows how to quilt. She was taught by Dee's namesakes—Grandma Dee and Big Dee—so she is a living part of the heritage that is nothing more than decoration to Dee.

For Maggie, the quilts are reminders of specific people, not of some abstract notion of heritage. "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts," Maggie says to her mother when she moves to give them up. It is this statement that prompts her mother to take the quilts away from Dee and hand them to Maggie because Maggie understands their history and value so much more deeply than Dee does.

Lack of Reciprocity

Dee's real offense lies in her arrogance and condescension toward her family, not in her attempted embrace of African culture .

Her mother is initially very open-minded about the changes Dee has made. For instance, though the narrator confesses that Dee has shown up in a "dress so loud it hurts my eyes," she watches Dee walk toward her and concedes, "The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it."

Uses the Name 'Wangero'

The mother also shows a willingness to use the name Wangero, telling Dee, "If that's what you want us to call you, we'll call you."

But Dee doesn't really seem to want her mother's acceptance, and she definitely doesn't want to return the favor by accepting and respecting her mother's cultural traditions . She almost seems disappointed that her mother is willing to call her Wangero.

Shows Possessiveness

Dee shows possessiveness and entitlement as "her hand close[s] over Grandma Dee's butter dish" and she begins to think of objects she'd like to take. Additionally, she's convinced of her superiority over her mother and sister. For example, the mother observes Dee's companion and notices, "Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head."

When it turns out that Maggie knows much more about the history of the family heirlooms than Dee does, Dee belittles her by saying that her "brain is like an elephant's." The entire family considers Dee to be the educated, intelligent, quick-witted one, and so she equates Maggie's intellect with the instincts of an animal, not giving her any real credit.

Appeases Dee

Still, as the mother narrates the story, she does her best to appease Dee and refer to her as Wangero. Occasionally she calls her as "Wangero (Dee)," which emphasizes the confusion of having a new name and the effort it takes to use it (and also pokes a little fun at the grandness of Dee's gesture).

But as Dee becomes more and more selfish and difficult, the narrator starts to withdraw her generosity in accepting the new name. Instead of "Wangero (Dee)," she starts to refer to her as "Dee (Wangero)," privileging her original given name. When the mother describes snatching the quilts away from Dee, she refers to her as "Miss Wangero," suggesting that she's run out of patience with Dee's haughtiness. After that, she simply calls her Dee, fully withdrawing her gesture of support.

Needs to Feel Superior

Dee seems unable to separate her new-found cultural identity from her own long-standing need to feel superior to her mother and sister. Ironically, Dee's lack of respect for her living family members—as well as her lack of respect for the real human beings who constitute what Dee thinks of only as an abstract "heritage"—provides the clarity that allows Maggie and the mother to "appreciate" each other and their own shared heritage.

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Everyday Use

Alice walker, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Heritage and the Everyday

Heritage, and its relationship to daily life, is the central question that Walker explores in “Everyday Use.” Through the eyes of Mama , and through the contrasting characters of Dee and Maggie , Walker offers two varying views of what family history, the past, and “heritage” really mean.

In Dee’s view, heritage is a kind of dead past, distanced from the present through nostalgia and aestheticization (which means reducing something to a symbol or piece…

Through Dee , “Everyday Use” explores how education affects the lives of people who come from uneducated communities, considering the benefits of an education as well as the tradeoffs.

Alice Walker clearly believes that education can be, in certain ways, helpful to individuals. For one, education can empower people financially and therefore materially. Dee’s education rewards her with the “nice things” she has desired since she was a child: gold earrings, a camera, sunglasses. The…

Objects, Symbolism, and Writing

As Mama narrates “Everyday Use,” she uses a multitude of objects and material goods to tell her story. Through Mama and her attention to objects, Walker investigates the meaning of materiality in fiction and explores the various ways they can be used for storytelling.

In the first place, material goods work in “Everyday Use” to stand in for and help describe characters’ identities. For example, Mama marks Dee ’s difference from the rest of her…

Racism, Resistance, and Sacrifice

Race structures the social and economic conditions of characters’ daily lives in “Everyday Use.” From the first few paragraphs, Walker makes it clear that the oppression of African-Americans is built into the society of the Deep South, where Mama and Maggie live. This injustice manifests itself in a multitude of ways, ranging from Mama’s inability to look “a strange white man in the eye” to her mentions of racialized violence, like the time when “the…

Cultural Identity and Heritage in the “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker Research Paper

Introduction, claims made in the story, how the author’s background and life experiences influence the theme, literary devices, characters that speak on behalf of the theme, works cited.

Everyday Use is a frequently anthologized chef-d’oeuvre short story by Alice Walker highlighting the problem of cultural identity and heritage among African Americans after the abolishment of slavery. Narrated in the first person, the story revolves around three characters – Mama and her two daughters, Dee (Wangero) and Maggie. Mama is caught up between two clashing views of African heritage held by Dee and Maggie. Walker uses these two characters to show the cultural and heritage dilemma that African Americans had to deal with after slavery and throughout the era of the civil rights movement. This paper discusses how Walker, in Everyday Use, makes a statement about cultural identity and heritage among African Americans.

Walker seems to claim that slavery and its subsequent abolishment created a conflict among African Americans concerning their heritage and cultural identity. On the one side, slavery robbed Africans of both. Immediately after becoming a slave, Africans were required to change their names and forget about their language and culture. Maggie represents the harm that slavery caused to Africans. When describing her, Mama says, “Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks” (Walker 333). She is the aftermath of the destruction that slavery had on Africans and their cultural identity. She is dull, uneducated, and full of both emotional and physical scars.

However, after the abolishment of slavery and the subsequent civil rights movement, Africans were educated. Therefore, they started understanding the damage that slavery had caused to their identity and heritage. Such enlightened Africans fought for their civil rights and the restoration of their heritage. Ironically, these individuals were unaware of the very heritage they were claiming. Dee represents this side of the conflict. While she has changed her name to Wangero, which is African, she does not understand her heritage. She is oblivious of the fact that her name, Dee, is generational because it was adopted from her great-grandmother. She also does not know the history of the quilts she wants to own. In other words, she does not understand the cultural identity that she claims to defend.

Walker was born in 1944 in Eatonton to black sharecroppers. Her family was extremely poor and being raised as the last born in a family of eight children meant that her life was difficult. Her life was limited by poverty and the fact that her brother shot her in the right eye with a BB gun when playing a game of cowboys and Indians (Lazo 25). She was teased and rejected due to this disfigurement until it was rectified later in life during her college years. She left Eatonton after securing a government scholarship to study at Spelman College in Atlanta in 1961 (Lazo 34). During this time, she got involved in the civil rights movement.

The plotline of Everyday Use mirrors Walker’s life experiences. She lived in conflict with herself – first by being brought up in poverty and ridiculed for her disfigured eye, and second by getting a higher education and becoming a champion of civil rights. Walker is talking about her conflicting sides – one that is conservative and shy and another being bold, educated, and aware of her rights. Cowart argues that the “story can be read, in fact, as a cautionary tale the author tells herself: a parable, so to speak, about the perils of writing one’s impoverished past from the vantage of one’s privileged present” (176).

In the broad context, Walker designs the story to underscore the conflict that African Americans faced concerning their cultural identity and heritage after the abolition of slavery. On the one hand, they were emancipated and educated to acknowledge the erosion of their cultural identity through slavery. On the other hand, they were suffering from the subjugation of slavery, and thus they were caught up between these two worlds.

Walker uses irony as a literary device to depict the conflict about cultural identity and heritage that African Americans were experiencing in the 20th century. Dee wants to reclaim her cultural identity because she cannot be associated with white people. She says, “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker 337). Therefore, she wants an African identity, which explains why she is now called Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. Ironically, she does not understand the heritage of the very identity she claims to pursue. This aspect stands out clearly when she talks about the quilts. She wants to hang them on the wall as cultural artifacts, but in African heritage, they are intended for everyday use.

On the other hand, Maggie, albeit uneducated, understands the meaning of the quilts. She wants to use them and replace them if worn out as part of the family’s history. Therefore, while Dee seeks to reclaim her cultural identity, she is conflicted because she has no real understanding of her ancestors. Towards the end of the story, she criticizes her mother and Maggie for being stuck in their old way of thinking. She is disconnected from the very past she claims to revere by changing her name (Cowart 172). This aspect shows the disconnect that African Americans had concerning their heritage while fighting for civil rights and the recognition of their heritage, while at the same time keeping up with modernity and being assimilated into the western culture.

Mama, Dee, Hakim, and Maggie speak on behalf of the theme of conflicting cultural identity and heritage among African Americans. Hakim identifies with Black Islam, but he “does not appear to be a good representative of these or any other ideals” (Sarnowski 272). Mama speaks for African Americans, who are torn between their cultural identity and western ideas. Maggie represents the side of Africans that was devastated by slavery and remained voiceless for long but held on to their heritage. On the other hand, Dee stands for the emancipated and empowered Africans, who wanted to reclaim their cultural identities, but they found some of the aspects and traditions repulsive and outdated. Maggie and Dee are the conflicting voices within Mama.

The first symbol used in this story is the quilts. They represent the strong bonds created between women of different generations to underscore their enduring legacy. Mama had promised to give Maggie some quilts during her marriage. The quilts are symbols of Mama’s cultural heritage and traditions. Mama says, “These old things were just done by me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died” (Walker 341). Therefore, the quilts carry the family’s history, and that heritage should be passed from one generation to the other. However, Dee does not appreciate this deep meaning of the quilts, and thus she rejects the cultural identity that she is pursuing. This aspect underscores the theme of cultural conflict as presented in this story.

The second symbol is the house, which was burned to the ground, and scarred Maggie in the process. The house represents the cultural identity of African Americans before slavery. Their heritage was strong and revered. However, slavery and poverty came along and burned down the culture (Maggie), and when it was abolished, the freed Africans remained with a conflicted view of their identities (Dee was born).

Cowart posits, “This burned house, however, represents more than failed attempt to eradicate poverty. It subsumes a whole African American history of violence, from slavery…to the pervasive inner-city violence of subsequent decades” (174). Mama tries to reconcile the two warring sides (Dee and Maggie), and she succeeds to some extent. The story ends with the two of them “sitting in silence, just enjoying until bedtime” (Tuten 126). Similarly, African Americans learned to live with their scars from slavery, violence, and poverty and at the same time adopted the western culture.

In Everyday Use, Walker narrates a story of conflicting cultural ideals that she faced at a personal level and which most African Americans encountered after the end of slavery. Dee claims to revere a cultural heritage that she does not understand. On the other hand, Maggie does not recognize that she is emancipated, and thus she is no longer bound by her inferiority, poverty, and lack of education. Mama has to live with these two conflicting sides. Walker succeeds to tell her personal story of struggle and at the same time chronicles the cultural identity dilemma that African Americans had to live with after slavery.

Cowart, David. “Heritage and Deracination in Walker’s “Everyday Use”.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 33, 1996, pp. 171-184.

Lazo, Caroline. Alice Walker: Freedom Writer. Lerner Publications Company, 2000.

Sarnowski, Joe. “Destroying to Save: Idealism and Pragmatism in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”.” Papers on Language & Literature , vol. 48, 269-286.

Tuten, Nancy. “Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”.” The Explicator, vol. 52, no. 2, 1993, pp. 125-128.

Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Short Story Masterpieces by American Writers, edited by Clarence Strowbridge, Dover Publications, 2014, pp. 331-344.

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Everyday Use

By alice walker, everyday use themes.

Race and racial identity is at the center of Everyday Use . Mama ’s racial experience has stayed relatively unchanged throughout her life. The only deviation from her status quo comes in the form of her eldest daughter Dee . Dee never accepted her place in life as an impoverished African-American girl in rural Georgia. There was always in Dee a tacit awareness that she is lighter skinned than the average black girl and that her socio-cultural expectations should somehow be “higher”.

When Dee goes away to school, she rejects her ancestral quilts as a way to distance herself from her upbringing. At college, Dee finds African nationalism and seeks to legitimize her identity within this context. She adopts a Ugandan name, Wangero, and style of dress. Dee’s new take on identity is in stark contrast to Mama's sense of identity, which is rooted in her immediate history and ancestry. While Dee seeks to better herself by embracing her roots, she nevertheless subjugates Mama and Maggie by suggesting that they do not know the value of their own culture - one in which they still live.

Walker presents myriad of themes and motifs surrounding race. Is Dee’s objectifying of Mama and Maggie merely a form of classism or is it a continued rebuke of her past? As Dee leaves Mama and Maggie standing in a cloud of dust clutching their quilts, it is clear the idea of racial identity is complex and inherently both personal and political.

Perhaps the biggest irony in the story is Dee’s rejection of her real heritage for a broader, yet limited, cultural ideal. By juxtaposing Dee with her sister and mother, Walker suggests Dee's new identity is simply a superficial rebranding of herself. She strives to wear her heritage like a unique treasure but ends up shrouded in imitation. Dee reinvents herself using a mixture of academic and romantic ideas of pre-colonial Africa, but her flamboyant clothing combined with her gaudy jewelry make “Wangero” look more like an African caricature rather than an authentic attempt at a cultural shift in attitude. In swapping her name - a familial namesake - for a Ghanaian one, she opts to identify with a less specific aspect of her heritage.

Dee's appreciation for items in Mama's home as artifacts of her heritage is similarly misguided. She insists a quilt, once viewed as a symbol of her family's poverty, is now imbued with the spirit of her ancestry. But Dee wants to fetishize these objects rather than put them to "everyday use", rejecting the active heritage around her. These items are an extension of her real heritage; having evolved with the family rather than become quaint reminders of a life Dee put behind her when she left for school. Her notion of heritage is one that is past - even though Mama and Maggie and their way of life are still very much present and valid. Heritage is, thus, both past and present, and encompasses one's personal and ancestral history.

Everyday Use is a story about a family homecoming, and the dynamics between the three women provide much of the narrative drama. Its narrator, Mama, reflects on her daughters and the circumstances of their upbringing while awaiting Dee's return. Dee was the more difficult child, but Mama nevertheless loved her. Maggie is scarred, but loving, respectful of her family and heritage. Mama believes that family ties are indelible, even despite Dee's dismissal of her childhood and direct ancestry. Named after a long line of Dees, Wangero's rejection of her birth name is a symbol for the rejection of her family - even if that rejection is an attempt to connect to a larger history. To Mama and Maggie, however, the people you come from and who raised you matter more than a legacy you read about in books. Like any family, Mama's family is fraught with drama and history, complexity and contradiction.

There is a sense of coziness and belonging that permeates the beginning of the story. Mama’s yard and living room seem extensions of each other, and of the family. Mama and Maggie live in relative poverty but at least their home belongs to Mama and she loves it. However, behind the placid portrait of home lie many painful memories. Mama’s husband is non-existent and Maggie’s disfigurement is a constant reminder of the fire that burned their last house down. Dee’s rejection of home also causes scars. Mama feels these scars opening again upon Dee’s return. To Dee, “home” is more an intellectual construct and not a place she belongs to; it as place filled with belongings that she can co-opt and repurpose to fit her new persona. To Mama and Maggie, home is a life force where artifacts like quilts and a butter churn evolve with the people using them.

Tradition in this story is reflected through items that are meant for everyday use. Items like the worn benches, butter churn, and quilts are living testimonies to people long dead. They represent a lifestyle that Mama and her community still lead. Dee finds these items traditional but appreciates them only in an academic context. She severs the objects from her ancestors that made and used them. To Dee they represent not family but a type of people and history she has long divorced herself from. Mama refuses to let these items become kitsch for her daughter’s flat. By putting them to good use, these items cease to become “artifacts” and remain integral to the lives of proud, hard-working people who continue to keep their traditions alive.

Everyday Use Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Everyday Use is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Everyday Use by Alice Walker

From the text:

I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down.

In paragraphs 61-72, how does the conversation between Dee and Mama about the quilts develop the theme?

I'm sorry, please provide the text in question.

I saw my brother sneaking out of my room, his (1) movements slow and silent. When he saw me the poor kid was flinching, practically (2) under my gaze. "I was just looking at your CDs," he told me. At least he admitted he had been (3) _. annoyed, I decided

Is this related to the book Everyday use? What are you asking here?

Study Guide for Everyday Use

Everyday Use study guide contains a biography of Alice Walker, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Everyday Use
• Everyday Use Summary
• Character List

Essays for Everyday Use

Everyday Use essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Everyday Use.

• Identity Confusion in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"
• The Black Empowerment Movement within Bambara's "The Lesson" and Walker's "Everyday Use"
• Pride and Heritage in “Everyday Use”
• "Everyday Use" from an Antipatriarchal Perspective
• A Comparison of Dee and Mathilde

Wikipedia Entries for Everyday Use

• Introduction
• Publication details

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Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use': Exploring Social Conflicts

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Related Essays on Everyday Use

In Alice Walker’s famous short story “Everyday Use,” Dee is perceived as an unsympathetic character. It is difficult for the reader to feel compassion for Dee since she possesses repelling characteristics; she is as [...]

In Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use," the theme of heritage plays a central role in exploring the complexities of family relationships and cultural identity. Through the characters of Mama, Dee, and Maggie, Walker delves [...]

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," the author explores the changing perspectives of African-Americans on their history and the conflicts that arise from these differences. Through the three main characters, Mama, Dee, and Maggie, [...]

In Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use," the characters of Maggie and Dee serve as illustrations of how individuals from the same background can develop different identities and worldviews. Through Walker's portrayal of [...]

Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" is a tightly woven tale that brings together many disparate elements of the story to reinforce the thesis put forward by W.E.B. DuBois that black Americans are trapped in a double [...]

“Everyday Use”, a short story written by Alice Walker, is told in the perspective of Mama. Mama is described as “a big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands”. The story begins with Mama waiting on her oldest daughter Dee to [...]

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