Alice Walker Heritage

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Alice Walker was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia. When a character rises out of poverty, readers usually sympathize and admire them, but not with Walker’s character Dee in the short story “Everyday Use”. Walker frequently uses images of gardening or quilting as analogies for the creative struggle of black women, which can be seen in “Everyday Use”; she uses heritage, the division of schooling, and work to tell a story about a young woman who does not comprehend her heritage and who is stuck in a cycle of oppression. To begin with, there are three main characters in “Everyday Use”. There’s Mama, Maggie, and Dee. Maggie is Dee’s sister and they are polar opposites. Maggie walks with her “chin on chest, eyes on [the] ground, [and her] feet in…show more content…
The quilts were made of dressed Grandma Dee wore fifty and more years ago and they were made of “pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts.” (1990) Dee asked Mama if she could have the quilts and when Mama tried to offer her quilts that were stitched around the corner instead of completely hand sewn, she declined them. This is because instead of caring about her heritage, Dee cares about showing people where she came from. Oftentimes, when characters, and people, rise up out of poverty, they enjoy showing people where they came from. Dee looks down on her family’s lifestyle so much that she is using it to compare her dowdy upbringing to the glamorous life she thinks she lives. However, glimmer and glam are in the eye of the beholder. Dee thinks she lives a wonderful life, but Mama and Dee also think they live a wonderful life. Mama and Dee enjoy learning about their heritage and keeping it alive. Dee wanted to hang the quilts in her living room so anyone who came over could see her heirloom, but Maggie was going to use them every day. Dee thought Maggie would ruin the quilts by constantly using them, but the continuous use of something is what keeps the memory alive. Dee trying to take Maggie’s wedding present makes her unlikable and makes readers view her as

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