The Meaning of Heritage

Introduction

“Everyday Use” is a short tale which depicts the conflicts among a single mother Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Dee Johnson (Walker, 1973). The personality of Mama and Dee were nearly opposite to each other, and so were their thoughts about their heritage and individuality. The story entails three major characters Mama (Mrs. Johnson) Dee and Maggie.

In a time period early 1970's, the power of black movement was not just only a political slogan against racism, but it was an ideology that promoted the racial pride and embraced African culture elements. During that time period, numbers of African-Americans were aimed to grow their hairs, wore traditional African clothing's and desperately focus on rejection of slave's man of whites. In Everyday Use, Alice Walker focuses on a family who has opposite views towards the tradition (Walker, 1973). The authors use heritage under the perceiving idea of African American identity.

I choose this topic because it deals with educational race issue of African American. In this topic, we learn how to control and understand senses, impact on the environment and our skills such as reading. For this paper, I have found some references that are consider as helpful to analyze this topic. I also provide an annotated bibliography and citation which is intended to pique reader interest in going to read the entire article related to this topic.

Discussion

Articles Annotated Bibliography

White, David. "Everyday Use, Defining African-American Heritage." 2002-09-09), retrieved from: ,http://www. Luminarium. org./contemporary/alice (2001) accessed on dated : July, 12, 2013

White suggested that Dee's refusal of her American heritage as stylishly taking on her African roots, representing the power of Black movement starts in 1960's. She is basically ignoring the history of her own family regarding her churn top, name, dashes and more importantly the quilts. Maggie, the sister, will not be Black power movement poster, but in a story she grasps the significance of African American heritage. Maggie learns quilts from Dee, the grandmother and knows about a contribution that was made by her ancestors to the family. Mama does not like Dee, she discards the egoism and starts play fake affection while she awaken to the advertisement that Maggie's have conquer to turn out to be strong women.

Whitsitt, Sam. "In Spite of It All: A Reading of Alice Walker's" Everyday Use"."African American Review 34.3 (2000): 443-459, retrieved from: http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/BulgozdiImola/3744820.pdf, accessed on dated: July 12, 2013

Whitsitt articulate the symbol of quilting to signify the artistic heritage that African Americans contain hereditary from their motherly relatives. According to the author, the quilt itself represents the tradition and history that bind heritage of African American to their past (Whitsitt, 2000, p. 450). The quilts are signifying the bond between each generation and its impact occur on each major character in a story that include Dee, Mama and Maggie. Major focus of quilts in the story is brings out the characters of true personalities.

Quilts and quilting can be seen as an attempt to make intelligence out of disorder, to create a whole out of pieces (Walker, 1973, ...