A mistaken concept of heritage

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)

First Blog & Summer Reading

This summer I filled some of my free time reading three books. One of these books was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, a highly acclaimed and famous book, also required reading for AP English class. In all honesty, this book was my least favorite of the ones that I read this summer. Another book that I read was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. This book was a very quirky kind of story that was a very enjoyable and fast read. The fast pace of the novel kept me interested in the story, and I also enjoyed some of the math problems and conundrums posed throughout the story. However, this book doesn't compare to one of the most informative and interesting books that I've ever read. Game of Shadows by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Willams was my final book that I read, and was an easy choice for my favorite book of the summer.

Game of Shadows is a true story about BALCO (Bay Area Labratories Co-operative) and its distribution of steroids and other performance enhancing substances to top athletes throughout the United States, focusing on Barry Bonds's steroid use and of the widespread steroid use in track and field. I found this book so interesting because of the true facts and details that it provides about a recent and still ongoing sports scandal and because it discussed something very important in my life, baseball. The book is essentially a novelized version of years of hard work by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and the investigative work about BALCO by the two authors, both San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters. True stories about things that I care about, such as sports and specifically baseball and football, are the stories that I find most interesting to read. At the end of the novel, the Appendix is filled with sources for almost every single paragraph in the book, which earned my trust as a reader. It was shocking and intriguing to me to learn how many athletes took steroids and other substances and how they were made undetectable by even the most advanced testing methods available. It was also very interesting to read about the back-door dealings with the steroid dealers, such as Victor Conte of BALCO, and the fights over dealers with competing athletes and substances.

One particular quote from the book stood out to me, especially with my reading of this book shortly before the Beijing Olympics. The authors wrote that "out of any world-class race with top runners, such as the 100m dash, 6 out of 8 runners are juicing." Information like shocked me, because although I knew of the proliferation of banned substances in sports like baseball, I didn't realize how much it had truly spread, especially in Olympic and world-class track and field. It also saddens me to think about the athletes in this past Olympics and the substances they may or may not be taking. For steroid dealers, it is all about being ahead of the newest tests, and most of the time the top chemists and dealers are able to do so with relative ease. I find this assignment interesting as we were just talking about Usain Bolt in class today and steriods, and now this post is all about a steroid book. In regards to Usain Bolt, it saddens me to say that he is definitely a juicer and not competing substance free. Often for steroid users, as I learned through the book, the rush because of the newfound energy and strength gives the runners much more confidence and arrogance, as shown by past admitted users like Tim Montgomory, a former world-record holder in the 100m dash. The pride and the showboating displayed by Bolt, besides being highly disrespectful to the other athletes, was a clear sign to me that he is on a illegal substance. This suspicion is supported by his absurd and highly unusual body frame for a sprinter, a gigantic 6' 5". Although I guess he deserves credit; at least 3 other runners in that race were probably also on steroids.

Game of Shadows taught me so much and gave me a very real and slightly scary perspective of the true nature of track and field as well as the secrets behind baseball home run kings. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in baseball or the steroids scandal, or if you just want to become a steroid dealer and want to learn about many different types of substances. (754)