citation help….
needs to be in MLA 8
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/
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D?Arco
Hannah D?Arco
Mr. Tredore
Eng. 102
17 April. 2017
Appreciating and celebrating one?s cultural background
?Everyday Use? is an American narrative written by a prolific African American woman,
Alice walker, to promote cultural celebration and ensure readers have love for their way of life
and own culture. The narration of Mama Johnson and her two daughters Maggie and Dee is
based on an African-American culture.
It is addressing the issue of how culture and heritage
should be valued and upheld. it concentrates on the views of a mother and her daughters and
their conflicting ideas about identities and ancestry as well.
By
using the concept of the quilt as a
primary subject matter, Walker intends to enlighten the reader on the importance of quilting
tradition and heritage to the African-Americans. It is showing the relationship the three women
had between themselves before and after Dee moved to the city (
Baker, Houston and Baker, pp
147).
The family is affected by a fire which leaves Maggie’s body parts; arms and legs,
seriously razed. However, with the help of the church, the family is able to convalesce. Dee
affords admission to college but Maggie remains at home learning traditional skills from her
family. Apparently, when Dee arrives with her boyfriend, in one of her rare visits, it is evident
that she has really changed. The change bothers her mother though she does not show it then.
The narration then purports to the reader perceptions and minds on serious inferences that
influence culture. The author is then directing the reader into Dee?s journey of mixed
acculturation of African-American culture when she claims she will wait for her mother in the
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yard instead of coming into the house. According to Cowart, this is an introductory statement for
the main characters and how they celebrate Dee, their guest, who comes from their own
bloodline (pp 171).
Dee is being celebrated greatly despite her transformed cultural and traditional attitude
since she is still one of the family members. Only the non-blood-related guest are supposed to be
applauded in such a manner. Everyone in the family looks up to Dee because she is educated.
Mama is now an overweight African- American woman living with the younger daughter
Maggie. Her body is muscled like a man?s. Even though she is uneducated and poor, she has
grown to be very independent and ethnocentric. However, Dee is an educated young woman who
has become significantly urbanized. she is beautiful and popular with high and overwhelming
goals. Dee is viewed as a materialistic person while Maggie seems to be the perfect autonomy.
After dinner with her family a sudden urge lingered of Dee having these old quilts which had
been passed on by her grandmother (Baker et al., pp 179). Maggie tries to solve this issue by
letting Dee keep the quilts while both Dee and Mama argue. Due to these false intentions and
weird demurs of Dee, Mama denies her wishes but instead passes them over to loyal Maggie.
Everyday rotates around a central image of quilting and quilts.
Walker’s use of this
metaphor is paramount to critics because he elaborated the major theme fully in her later work,
especially in the novel “The Color Purple?.
Quilt is a metaphor expounding on ways in which
discarded scraps and fragments, may be made into a unified whole. The author is using the style
to symbolize a change meaningless things may be transformed into valued and useful traits.
Walker finds this metaphor useful in describing the lives of African American women which
have often been ignored and misrepresented in the traditional history. The commentaries on Alice
Walker’s “Everyday use” characteristically focus on the emergence of Mama to one of her
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