Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a short story about a family during the civil rights movement at a time of racism. The mom grew up in a different cultural environment and the black culture has changed through the generations. We see how the mom grew up in an environment where “colored asked fewer questions” (3). The context helps with the message of don’t take anything for granted, everything is important. The civil-rights issues during the time period focused on ethnic pride and heritage. In this story, Dee doesn’t have that much ethnic pride. Her lack of pride is illustrated when the narrator describes how ‘she used to read us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice’ (2). Dee tells stories about other people and their lives because she doesn’t want to live her own. She’s ashamed to live the way her family does which is why she tried so hard to get out of it.
The story teaches her audience not to take anything for granted and to hold onto your heritage. We see the purpose come to light with the eldest daughter’s actions. Dee shows up to her mother’s house and seems proper and too herself and she makes her family feel as if they’re not good enough. The readers have already learned how she had a specific image for her family at the bottom of page 2. She waltzes in with a “dress down to the ground…” showing how she has moved up in the world and her family has not (4). Her mother shows that is not important by denying Dee the quilt at the end of the story and gives Maggie the quilt instead. Dee wanted to hang it on a wall but her mother said she missed the point and Maggie would use it and embrace it rather than hang it at a wall like a museum. Maggie is seen as more hated than Dee but finally becomes more superior making the point more powerful.
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