Alice Walker Heritage

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Conflicting Identities of Heritage and Cultures Within the context of her story, “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a culture of heritage surrounding Mama, Maggie, and Dee. Each of these women value their heritage differently. Their heritage is symbolized using memorable handed down items including: Grandma Dee’s butter dish, dasher, and hand closed churn top, and the quilts of past generations. These items of heritage are meant to be passed down from generation to generation and respected as valuable irreplaceable items of one’s family history. However, their heritage has caused conflicting ideas affecting each individual differently, showing how cultures and heritage should be used daily, not forgetting traditions, while keeping them alive every day.…show more content…
Mama refers to Dee as, “The child who has made it” (Walker 460). Whereas, according to Mama, Maggie is “a lame animal” (Walker 461). Mama values her heritage as a strong value of memories, represented in the quilts according to Walker as he says, “Scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn…bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts…Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the civil war” (Walker 466). These quilts show a conventional symbolic reference to their family heritage, because “no one person or committee decided that these objects would convey symbolic meaning in our culture” (Walker xxv). They can only be appreciated by knowing each stitch was made from a particular family’s heritage, and used every

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