African American Heritage In Dee's Everyday Use

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The story Everyday Use takes place during, presumably, the Civil Rights movement. This is a perfect timeframe for a story such as this. It helps to frame the questions of heritage and cultural disconnect that this story has at its core. Slavery was a horrible institution that stripped families, not only of their culture, but their humanity. In this degradation they were robbed of their traditions and heirlooms, left only with stories and names to pass down to their children. There was an undeniable cultural gap between the life left behind on the African continent and the families that were grown in the harsh soil of slavery. In many ways, African American heritage is like a bone. Slave owners broke it and made sure it never healed properly; …show more content…

Her ancestors had no choice when they had their heritage taken from them, and she is trying to force her family to make one now. To abandon what they have known their whole life or continue as they always have. Faced with this decision most people will not choose change, for there is a certain terror to facing the unknown. There is a type of pride in carrying on despite the wrongs done to you and Mama certainly carries herself with it. Mama is very much a product of her times, a child of the Great Depression. She is unfailingly practical and to her Dee’s approach to her heritage is absurd. Things like butter churns and quilts are to be used until they fall apart. Maggie is also a product of her childhood- forever expecting Dee to take whatever she wants while Dee strives for her goals. Meanwhile it is made obvious through the narrative that Dee has always looked at her family’s way of life with distaste. It is not malicious. She longs for more and wonders at how her family is content with what they have. She comes back to her home with a new look and a new name. She does not want her heritage to be stolen from her again and longs to preserve it in any way possible. To Dee preservation means displaying it. It means keeping heirlooms safely tucked away where they cannot be

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