Everyday Use

Like the return of a princess, Mama and the ôhangdogö and ôslowö Maggie await DeeÆs return. However, we are told that ôMaggie will be nervous until her sister goes,ö (Walker, p. 1173). She will be nervous because she has always been devalued in comparison to Dee by her mother and, once she returns, by Dee herself. While Mama is complicit in DeeÆs being favored, when Dee demands the quilts made by MamaÆs mother that are for MaggieÆs wedding gift, Mama finally puts her foot down and favors Maggie at DeeÆs expense. This is because Mama realizes that despite DeeÆs qualities, she has more in common with Maggie and they share a greater mother and daughter bond and connection to their heritage than Dee ever will.

We see that Mama makes many distinctions between her daughters Maggie and Dee that favor Dee. Maggie has dark-skin but ôDee is lighterö and has ônicer hair and a fuller fig

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r Grandma Dee without the quilts,ö (Walker, p. 1179). In this we see the bond of sisterhood between Mama and Maggie and we see MaggieÆs recognition that the quilts are more than just a fine piece of craftsmanship; they are symbolic of her heritage and cultural history. Even though she is slow, scarred, skinny, and awkward, Maggie can quilt like her namesake Grandma Dee. It is Mama, who has long perceived Dee as superior to Maggie, who must come to the recognition of this power and connection in Maggie. As Gruesser (p. 183) writes of this moment of awareness that hits Mama when she denies Dee and embraces Maggie: ôIt is at this moment in the story that Mama has her epiphany, realizing that her thin, scarred, pathetic daughter, who knows how to quilt and serves as her familyÆs oral historian, deserves the quilts more than her shapely, favored, educated daughter, Dee, who only wants the quilts because they are now fashionable.ö The greatest symbol in Everyday Use that is related to MamaÆs epiphany that Maggie is more bonded to her heritage and her than Dee is, of course, the quilts. Quilted by ôGrandma,ö the quilts are an oral history, a voice of a people who were historically marginalized and silenced by a racist white culture
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1814
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)