Tradition and heritage play a large part in “Everyday Use,” though the characters have vastly different takes on what “tradition” and “heritage really mean. Dee constructs a new heritage for herself, failing to see her new “heritage” is merely an empty shell, holding no real meaning.
Dee shows up, boasting a new, more African name, saying she “couldn’t bear” being named after the people who “oppressed” her. Dee doesn’t realize that there is significance to her name, which was passed down from generation to generation. Meanwhile, her new name is devoid of meaning, much like her “African” dress and jewelry. Dee doesn’t understand her real heritage, so the “heritage” she has built around herself is only a house of cards, not a stable structure filled with bright splashes of tradition.
Dee and her mother have contradictory views on what heritage actually is. Maggie and the mother uses all the items Dee views as objects of “heritage.” Each of the items she takes show signs of wear, such as where “thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood” in the churn dasher. However, Dee takes these everyday items to be mere decoration, similar to museum exhibits. Just like how exhibits are often trapped under glass cases, these objects are, in a way, detached from Dee. She doesn’t know the history behind them, viewing them as a dead fossil instead of something very much alive.
When Dee leaves her mother and sister, she tells them that they don’t “understand” their heritage. But it is Dee, in her faux African dress, who doesn’t understand the meaning in her culture. Items of family heritage were made to be used, not stared at while on display.