Everyday Use African American Heritage Analysis

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As a Black-American I’ve learned to truly appreciate the Black culture and where I’ve come from. This day in age many young African-American youth forget our heritage, and the hardships that our African-American ancestors had to endure for our freedom and equality. In the 1970s many groups such as the Afro-American, the Black Panthers, and Black Muslim groups aimed to redefine the Black image in America. Some groups strongly believed in re-connecting with the old African traditions by parting with their English names and receiving traditional African names as well as embracing the traditional African attire such as long dresses, sandals, and afros. Alice Walker’s Everyday Use follows Dee, as she rejects her true heritage and adopts a false…show more content…
Throughout the book Dee continues to treat her mother and sister in a disrespectful manner as she strives to prove that she is more knowledgeable of their heritage in the way that she dresses and by demanding that she be called Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, a traditional African name. One theme that is strongly apparent within the story of Everyday Use is the importance of truly understanding heritage, more specifically African American heritage. We see this when Dee makes herself separate from her mother and sister by treating them as if she is superior due to the fact that she has an education and they do not, but also when she adopts an insincere and flamboyant outward persona of an intellectual appreciation for her heritage when on the inside she knows nothing of her actual…show more content…
Mama describes their house that lies in a pasture as a simple house with a tin roof, and no windows but holes cut in the walls. Mama knows that Dee will not approve of wherever they live, “she wrote me once that no matter where we choose to live, she will manage to come and see us. But she will never bring her friends (Walker 466).” Dee feels above whatever her mother and sister do, especially where they live. She quotes she will never bring her friends to see how they live out of

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