Everyday Use Heritage

In this story “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker tells the story of a mother and her two daughters conflicting ideas about their identities and ethnicity. She epitomizes the different sides of heritage and culture in the characters of the three people with their different qualities and ideologies in life. The mother is a candid country woman who valued heritage and culture for its usefulness as well as its significance by living and doing simple things in life. She shows contempt for Dees materialistic approach to her heritage. Maggie is the shy, passive sister who is similar to her mother in her simple way of life and her way of approach to heritage.
Dee follows a materialistic and modern way of life where heritage and culture are valued
only for their artistic interest. Ones heritage and culture should be followed daily to preserve the traditions. Despite the fact that the three woman are one family, their views in life are very diverse. Mother is proud of her identity and is happy with the life she has been given. Dee sees herself as in control of her life and believes she has the ability to do anything she wants with it. This attitude is shown in the story when she insists on taking the churn top and the dasher and then the old quilts which her mother promised to give Maggie. Maggie has accepted life as it is and continues to live in an uneducated place where happiness is formed in the heart and not with control over life. Maggie and her mother believe that heritage deals with their family traditions. When the mother gives quilts to Maggie she expects her to put them to everyday use. It proves that her connection to the quilts are personal and emotional. It means a lot to her not because they are hand stitched but because of the people who stitched make the quilts special for her. Dee believes that traditions are about African culture and wants nothing to do with her family’s heritage until it is in style. Dee is ashamed of her family’s heritage and what they represent. She understands her African culture and tradition, but fails to admit her own African American culture. Dee does not want to be attached to her family’s culture and by changing her name, gives her a sense of freedom. Maggie and her mother love to remember who and what they are as individuals. Maggie and her mother consider heritage everything that is involved in their daily lives as well as in the lives of their
ancestors.
Dee believes heritage is something from past which is framed or hung on walls as mere artistic reminders of her family history. I am an Indian and I am proud of my culture, traditions, and heritage.
America is a land of immigrants it gives the people living here the freedom to follow their respective culture, and traditions. If a person is ashamed of his/her ethnicity they are ashamed of their attitude towards it, and not towards its credibility.

This story typically centers on the mother’s stirring realization to Dee’s serious thought on traditions, culture and to Maggie’s great understanding of heritage. She begins to see Maggie in a different perspective and learn to appreciate her simplicity and goodness as compared to Dee’s cosmopolitan and ambitions. Walker tells us that a persons heritage should be a part of their culture from which it came and not a negligible thing to avoid. “A concentrated effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies all of the things that quite literally make us who we are”, the saying by Steve Berry exactly suits this
essay.