Everyday Use by Alice Walker

Introduction

The short article Everyday Use is central in Alice Walker's composing, especially as it represents her answer to the concept of heritage as expressed by the very dark political movements of the 60s. Despite its significance, no adequate interpretation of the African and Arab titles utilised in the text has to my knowledge appeared. Yet Walker was very cautious in her choice of names, which signify an significant part of her characterization.

Characters

Maggie - The junior daughter who stays with Mama while Dee is away at school. Though recounted by her mother as unintelligent and unattractive, Maggie is furthermore a very innocent and modest character. She directs a easy life with her mother and has a conventionally south life.

Mama - actions as narrator of the story. She is furthermore renowned as Mrs. Johnson. She is a middle-aged or older African-American woman dwelling with her junior daughter, Maggie. Although poor, she is powerful and unaligned as shown by how she interacts with her young kids, and takes large pride in her way of life. Her look is described as somebody who is overweight, and somebody who has a body that is more like a man's than a woman's. She has powerful hands that are damaged from a lifetime of work. Played by Lyne Odums in the movie adaptation.

Plot

This was in the heyday of the very dark Power ideologies when very dark was attractive, the Afro hairstyle was in fashion and Blacks were searching their heritage roots in Africa, without understanding too much about the countries or the paths of the Atlatic Slave Trade.

Dee has joined the action of the heritage Nationalism, whose foremost representative was the very dark author LeRoi Jones (Imamu Baraka) The Cultural Nationalists emphasized the development of very dark art and heritage to farther very dark liberation, but were not militantly political, like, for demonstration, the Black Panthers. The concepts of the heritage Nationalists often resulted in the vulgarization of very dark heritage, examplfied in the wearing of robes, sandals, hairspray natural style, etc.

Setting

Dee bases her new-found persona on resemble Kikuyu names. Alice Walker may have liked Dee "who knew what style was" to suppose a regal touch as an African princess. The titles are therefore a blend of titles from more than one ethnic group and maybe that is the point. Dee has titles comprising the whole East African region. Or more likely, she is ...