“Everyday Use”: Understanding heritage

With the short story, “Everyday Use”, Alice Walker shows two very different concepts of remembering heritage. She does this by using the two daughters in the story as foils. They are extremely different characters in just about every way imaginable, from their appearance to the way that they behave, and they each have very opposing ways in which they celebrate their heritage. This story shows how a mother rejects her older and seemingly successful daughters …

…an African-American woman’s everyday work should be viewed and respected as a valued art form, yet it must be kept close to the heart and to the family that it came from. Not kept at a distance as the character Dee would have done. Although through this story she is speaking to African-American women, I believe that this ideal is something that is important to everyone and something that we all could learn from.