Everyday Use By Alice Walker

Introduction

Today we will be discussing the cultural artifacts in a story published in April 1973, called “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker.
Alice Walker is a well-known American poet, short storyteller, novelist, and social activist.
Three women grew up together in a small home on a cattle farm, in the middle of a pasture with a rough-handed blue-collar mother. The eldest child, Dee, with big hopes and dreams of being something one day was sent to college in Augusta, Georgia. As Dee returns home after quite some time, she realizes her mother has some cultural artifacts that she would love to have, but her mother has other plans for them.
Mama is the mother of the two children, also acting as the father. She works tirelessly to put food

She reminds Dee that the dasher was hand made by Big D’s ex-husband.

Second, the quilt is an artifact symbolic to the three main characters.
Mama views the quilt as the most symbolic artifact to her. Made from her mother's dresses, Mama is not so willing to give the quilts out. She had plans for the quilts and was hinting at Dee that she was overstepping.
Suggesting, “why don’t you take one or two of the others?” Mama does not want to give her hand-woven quilts to Dee. Mama slightly feels surprised as she tried to give Dee a quilt when she went away for college, but Dee said they were “old fashioned,” and “out of style.”
Dee views the quilt as the most important thing in the household to her. She does not pay as much attention to the other artifacts as she does the quilts. Explaining that these quilts were handmade by her grandmother, she expresses how she does not want any other quilt. The quilts are the most important artifact to Dee.
Recognizing the significance of the quilts, Dee explains, “these are all pieces of dresses grandma used to wear.” When Mama tells her about her plans of giving the quilts to Maggie, she gasped like a bee had stung

Maggie stood quietly in the kitchen as her mother and sister disputed over the quilts. Maggie had never thought of the quilts as something important to their heritage.
Maggie tells her mother as she walks up from the kitchen, “she can have them, mama,” realizing how important they are to her sister. To show that she really does care, she gasps with excitement as her mother places the quilts on her lap.

Third, the table bench is an artifact symbolic to the three main characters.
Mama thought of the bench as a symbolic artifact because if she did not, she would not still be using them. Since the girls were little, the same table benches have been used at the dinner table.
Mama uses the benches still because they were handmade and have character.
Dee views the table bench as symbolic to her cultural heritage as she recognizes she had been eating on it for most of her life. Dee makes a remark to her mother in the middle of dinner to explain her excitement for the bench.
“Oh mama!” Dee cried, “I never knew how lovely these table benches were.” She describes the wear and tear through the years by saying “you can feel the rump