Dee is a young African American woman with University education; she is emancipated, aware and proud of her past, and aggressively defensive of her African heritage. Her younger sister, Maggie, is a quieter, calmer and less assertive character. Maggie is extremely self-conscious, but she holds Dee, her elder sister, in awe. The short story ‘Everyday Use’ brings out the passion with which Dee seeks to find her African heritage. It emerges that she tramples and trashes her immediate past in the process of doing that.
Dee is a fiercely independent-minded young woman. Her decision to convert her name from Dee to Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo is indicative of the esteem with which she holds her African roots. The reader gets an insight into the depth of Dee’s loathing for her original name, when she puts across a strongly worded argument why she does not want to be called Dee. She says she can stand it no more being named after people who oppress her. She wants to fully identify herself with her African heritage, and changing her name would be the greatest indication of how passionately she pursues this course. Her mother, Mrs. Johnson, does not immediately approve of the new name, and tries to dissuade her from adopting it. However, Dee puts her to task, demanding to know the original person from whom the name was acquired. Mother does not provide Dee with a satisfactory response, but Dee decides to drop the argument, silently convinced that the name was acquired from some white person who played a part in the oppression black slaves endured.
Dee has an ardent desire to identify with items that can be traced back in her family line. This also provides an insight into Dee’s earnest wish to find her heritage. Dee wishes to be associated with things that possess some of her history. When she asks for the churn top, the reader can feel the excitement that wells up in her. She discloses that the reason she wants the churn top is that some uncle of hers fabricated it out of a tree that ‘they all used to have’. This illustrates how proud she is to associate with things that reflect not only her past, but also her heritage. Dee not only shows an avid liking for the churn top, she also appreciates the benches her father made back in the day. She says that she never knew how lovely those benches were. This statement is so flattering that the reader is left wondering whether Dee is genuine in her sentiments, or she is only trying to make her mother and sister feel appreciated. However, it reveals the fact that Dee, despite the fact that she lives away from home in a more ‘decent’ place, nonetheless appreciates the place from which she comes.
The last incidence of the story throws even more light onto Dee’s new mentality. When she asks mother if she can have the quilts her grandmother made, she gets a refusal. Mother informs Dee that she saved those for Maggie, so that she could have them for her wedding, but Dee furiously protests. She claims that Maggie is not able to appreciate the quilts as they should be appreciated, that she would turn them to rags in a short span of time. She concludes that mother and Dee cannot appreciate their heritage. This incident, distasteful as it is to her mother, casts light onto the passion with which Dee recognizes and appreciates her heritage.
It is evident that Dee is too obsessed. She seems not to understand that the heritage she seeks so much is part of Maggie and mother’s lifestyle, and not in the keeping of antiques and souvenirs. She wrongly accuses Maggie of incapability to understand her heritage and appreciate it. The life she lives, the clothes she wares, and her boyfriend, Hakim-a-barber, do not reflect the heritage she purports to understand and defend so well.
Maybe it is the oppression she, her family and her ancestors have undergone because of white men, or maybe it is just a thorough awareness she has gained through education. Whatever the case, Dee is a girl who seeks to find and protect her heritage. She may not fully comprehend what she needs to do to achieve this, but it is clear that her wish is to see her heritage appreciated and preserved.
The article was written by professional writer Lola Nickson, more her papers you can find at papers-land writing service.