Dee's Family Heritage In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

Dee has always been different from her Mama and sister, Maggie. In the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, Dee feels that her family heritage is a nuisance and wants to have a different one. Coming home from college one weekend she brings a boy with her named Hakim-a-barber, are visiting the family and having a dinner that Mama has prepared for everyone. Dee has many conflicts with her mother. Dee has high self-appearance standards, wants everything to be hers, and knows little about her family heritage. Dee being different from her family is already setting herself apart from them. She has high standards when it comes to herself and her style. Mama dresses like a man most of the time due to her body build she is a bigger woman compared to Dee, who has “nicer hair and a fuller figure” (p 330). Throughout high school Dee always wanted to have nice things for herself “...a yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school; black pumps to match a green suit...at sixteen she had a style of her own” (p 331) this reflects Dee’s character and attitude toward her appearance compared to Mama. When Dee steps out of the car she is wearing a flowy orange and yellow dress, long earrings, bracelets, and white
Once she has arrived at her house she explains to Mama why she changed her name. “...not ‘Dee,’ Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!” Mama is puzzled and asks with an answer “...I couldn’t bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me” (p 332). She does not understand that her name has a special meaning and is a family named passed on for generations even though Mama tries to explain it to her. When Dee asks for the old quilts and is denied she tells her family “You just don’t understand...Your heritage” (p 335). This shows Mama how little Dee knows about her own heritage and how selfish she can be once she does not get her own