Everyday Use

I really liked this story. I found it to be humorous in places, and very relatable in others. The matriarch of the family and younger daughter Maggie await the arrival of Dee, and while they wait we find out that she was not happy to be raised poor and in the country. It sounds as though she may have hated her older house so much that she burned it down, causing Maggie to be burned in the process. Maggie is portrayed as a homebody, perhaps a little bit simpler, but devoted to her mother and the traditional ways. I can’t quite see Dee cooking or gardening. When Dee arrives, she is in traditional African clothing, with a boyfriend who is Muslim (Nation of Islam?) She has changed her name, as it came from “the people who oppressed [her]”. Maggie and Mama found that a little amusing, as she was named after her aunt and grandmother. Although Dee spent her childhood expressing her distaste in everything around her, she is now taking Polaroid pictures of everything she sees, as though it is brand new and freshly authentic. She enthusiastically ate a meal that she probably would’ve turned her nose up at just a few years before, and then went looking for antiques and other things around the house that represented her family history. Things that she never would have touched, much less knew how to use, she wanted to take with her. Maggie knew the history of each piece, who “whittled” what, etc. Then she wanted some of the hand-pieced quilts, quilts that she had previously refused because they were “out of style”. Dee/Wangero only wanted them to hang on the wall, to show them off because of her new interest in her “roots”. Even though Mama had promised them to Maggie when she married, Maggie, used to being overrun by Dee, offered them to her sister. But Mama wasn’t having it- she knew that Dee didn’t really appreciate the quilts; Maggie did. Her compromise to Dee was ignored, and Dee said that the other two women did not understand their heritage- but it was she who didn’t. Mama and Maggie lived their heritage every day, in the sweeping of the yard, in their church, their cooking of certain foods, their quilting using old clothes, using furniture handed down for generations, etc.- that was their heritage. Dee was pretending, and as soon as she tired of it, she would move onto something else, still not understanding or appreciating where or whom she came from.