Quotes From Everyday Use By Alice Walker

In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” she writes about how people’s life experiences can affect the way they view the world. She uses the characters of a mother and two daughters, Maggie and Dee. The mother starts off thinking about how her children used to be, Dee would be ashamed to bring her friends to the house and distanced herself from her family. Maggie was shy and cared a lot about her family and heritage, she even burned herself saving some of her grandmother’s quilts while Dee watched from the yard safely. After the mother is done recollecting she sees her daughter Dee pull up in her car from college. She steps out in highly fashionable clothes and her husband Asalamalakim. After introductions Dee explains that she has changed

The mother sees it as who she is and remembers her family with her culture. There is a quote where Wangero sees a dasher and wants to use it for her art and the mother sees the history behind the dasher. “Wangero said, laughing. "I can use the chute top as a centerpiece for the alcove table," she said, sliding a plate over the chute, "and I'll think of something artistic to do with the dasher."... I took it for a moment in my hands. You didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.” When Wangero see this dasher she doesn’t think about how other people think about the dasher just what she thinks of it. She doesn’t think that it could have significance for Maggie and her mother which it does. Wangero even treats her heritage

Wangero says that she changed her name because she didn’t want the name given to her because of its poor origin. “Wangero said. ‘I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me.’” When wangero says this she refers to the slave owners that owned her family and gave the name Dee to one of the women when they were freed. The name was then passed down through generations. Wangero took this name away from her trying to keep her from being connected to the origin of her family. She probably did this while her mother and sister didn’t because of the different ways they were raised and grew