Skip to main content

How does Alice Walker explore cultural identity in her short story "Everyday Use"?

Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" examines a changing time in African-American history. Set in the 1960s, the story contrasts rural, tradition-based African-American heritage with the movement to reinvent African-American identity with a basis in African tribal culture.


The main question in the story considers what should be done with the African-American heritage of slavery and oppression: Should it be distanced from us, or embraced and built upon? 


The climax of "Everyday Use" revolves around the question of which daughter should receive the family's heirloom hand-sewn quilts. Maggie has been promised them as a wedding present, but Dee wants them to display. The two daughters represent two ways to proceed into the future as a black woman in the sixties. By contrasting the two daughters, Walker illustrates the choice black women faced: embrace the history of black oppression and keep it as part of one's everyday life, or move forward and distance oneself from it. Maggie's character represents the choice to keep the past close: she will use the quilts as they were intended to be used. Dee represents the alternative option: keep the quilts as a decoration rather than a useful piece of the household, thus separating the present from the past.


African-American cultural identity in the 1960s was in flux. Segments of the African-American community began to shift how they chose to identify culturally. Much of the flux of the sixties revolved around the choice to embrace the past or distance it. Walker encapsulates this pivotal moment by telling a story about two daughters and some quilts. Walker concludes her narrative with the mother deciding to give Maggie the quilts. By choosing to end the story this way, Walker advances her belief that the better path for African-American women is to keep the past and traditions close, rather than hold them at a distance.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more