For my blog this week, I wanted to further comment on Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” and specifically the idea of heritage that Dee discusses. At the end of the story, Dee is frustrated with her mother because she doesn’t understand her heritage (81), or rather what Dee’s concept of heritage is. Dee believes that her heritage is that of the entire African-American people, which is partly true, but she completely forgets about her immediate family and their lineage. Her ignorance of her own family is shown in her careless statement about her name change that she “couldn’t bare it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (27). This statement is stupid and incorrect. One reason why this is wrong, as her mother immediately points out, is that she was named in honor of two of her family members, her aunt and then her grandmother. Dee, or “Wangero,” is completely oblivious to her family’s history, and I find it sad how she cannot even recall the names of her aunt and grandmother, for it she did remember their names she would not have make such an uninformed statement as she did in paragraph 27.
Continuing on the topic of her name change, her new name itself is another perfect example of Dee’s mistaken concept of heritage. Her new name, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, while not explicitly stated in the story, is an African name, and shows her attempt to get back to her “roots,” which she believes is just Africa. We as readers can easily assume that this is an African name not only by the spelling and pronunciation of it, but also by her greeting to her mom and sister earlier in the story, when she exclaimed “Was-su-zo Tean-o!” (21). Using a Swahili greeting and then following that by stating her new African name is a clear sign that she is more concerned about her African roots than her family roots. This false idea of her heritage has to annoy her mother, and also frustrates me as a reader of the story.
The conversation and debate about the fate of Grandma Dee’s hand-stitched quilts also reveals a flaw in Dee’s way of thinking about her heritage. Dee desires the “priceless” quilts only to hang them and use them purely for display purposes, to attempt to show her roots and “honor” her family. This in itself is wrong, as it has already been shown that Dee truly does not respect her family or care about honoring their memory. Maggie’s intended use of the quilts would actually honor her family, as she would use the quilts regularly and for the function that was intended when Grandma Dee stitched the first thread. Overall, throughout the entire story, it is overwhelmingly obvious that Dee does not truly understand her heritage. (468)
1 comment:
John Hank--What Dee does is what many African-Americans did at about the same time, changing their names to make a political and cultural statement about the legacy of slavery. But you're right--the way Alice Walker handles the issue, Dee is shown making that decision for reasons that fail to appreciate who she is and where she came from. And for that she deserves to have a little fun poked at her. Good point.
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