Identity And Heritage In Everyday Use By Alice Walker

340 Words2 Pages
Two themes that show up in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” are identity and heritage. The story is centered around Mama, Maggie, and Dee (Wangero). After the narrator (Mama), brings the reader into the story, Dee pays a visit home. Dee also brings a guest with her: Hakim-a-barber. Whether they were boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife, it does not say. Dee and Hakim pull up to the house and when Dee steps out of the car, she greets Mama and Maggie in a foreign dialect. She’s dressed in a brightly colored dress that Mama says is so loud it is “enough to throw back the light of the sun.” When Mama speaks to Dee, Dee states that she wants to be called Wangero because Dee is dead. Dee’s reasoning behind changing her name is that she “couldn’t