The story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a pretty interesting story. It begins with Mama, waiting for the arrival of Dee, her eldest of the daughters. She stands next to Maggie, who is shy and has burn marks on her body. As they await the arrival, the reader is given a background to the life of Mama and how she and Dee grew distant. Dee was smart and driven and wanted to get more out of life than Mama, and her ancestry had to offer. All of it came at the expense of Maggie and Mama. Dee arrives with Hakim, a barber, who turns out to be her boyfriend. Dee also goes by a new name, “Wangero” and wants her family to use it. Dee is more interested in gathering artifacts from her family than connecting with them. They go through the possessions of Mama in their search for some authentic items of her African American descent, which she wants to display in her house. Dee is somewhat rude when talking to Mama and Maggie. She gets to some quilts that were meant for her younger sister, and Dee wants them for herself. This results in Dee lashing out at Mama, claiming that she deserves the quilts more. Mama gives the quilts to Maggie, in which she asks Dee to leave, and she does.
The basic theme of the story is to respect your heritage and everything your ancestors went through. Dee has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage. However, the new name, like the “African” clothes and jewelry she wears to make a statement, is meaningless. She has little true understanding of Africa, so what she considers her true heritage is actually empty and false. This was a story that was kind of hard to understand, but it was a good one.