The Concept of Heritage in Alice Walker′s "Everyday Use"

Abgabetermin: 14.8.2001

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Dee′s Concept of Heritage

2. The Concept of Heritage of Mrs. Johnson and Maggie

3. Quilts as Symbol of Cultural Heritage

4. Alice Walker′s Role as Literary Quiltmaker

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Alice Walker′s short story "Everyday Use", from the collection In Love and Trouble published in 1973, was written during the heyday of the Black Power movement, when African Americans were trying to reach more than mere racial equality and insisted on self-determination and racial dignity. The tracing of ancestral African roots, the slogan Black is Beautiful, and the Afro hair style arose. African American short stories of this period were often concerned with problematic issues of integration, separation, redefinition of the past, distant African heritage, and immediate family history. In "Everyday Use", the contrast between two sisters and the domestic struggle over old hand-made quilts reveal the use and misuse of the concept of heritage and different attitudes towards one′s familiar traditions and cultural background. Alice Walker not only explores a disturbed intrafamily relationship between three black women of the South, but represents a severe conflict within America′s black society, where new radical views and misperceptions of the word heritage collide with traditional black rural life style.
A singular general meaning of the term heritage does not exist. Dictionaries mostly carry several definitions. For example, the Reader′s Digest Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary gives the following two entries:
1. Property that is or can be inherited; an inheritance.
2. Something other than property passed down from preceding generations; a legacy; a tradition. (Rattray 789)

1. Dee′s Concept of Heritage

The short story "Everyday Use" opens as Mrs. Johnson and her younger daughter Maggie await a visit from Dee, the elder daughter, who early on left home to attend college in Augusta. To her family′s surprise, she shows that she is riding on the latest wave of fashionable Africanism by arriving in a loud-colored outfit with her hair standing "straight up like the wool on a sheep" (Walker 2322). Dee explains that she has changed her name to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, because she "couldn′t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress" her (Walker 2322). This controversial step reveals Dee′s confusion concerning the nature of her heritage. While her original name, already carried by several female ancestors, can be traced back beyond the Civil War, the new African name is not related to her personal history and dissociates the young woman from her family.

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