Alice Walker
After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jattell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War.
“Mama,” Wangero said sweet as a bird. “Can I have these old quilts?”
I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed.
“Why don’t you take one or two of the others?” I asked. “These old things was just done by me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died.”
“No,” said Wangero. “I don’t want those. They are stitched around the borders by machine.”
“That’ll make them last better,” I said.
“That’s not the point,” said Wangero. “These are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear. She did all this stitching by hand. Imagine!” She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them.
“Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old clothes her mother handed down to her,” I said, moving up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved back just enough so that I couldn’t reach the quilts. They already belonged to her.
“Imagine!” she breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.
“The truth is,” I said, “I promised to give the quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John Thomas.”
She gasped like a bee had stung her.
“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” she said. “She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”
“I reckon she would,” I said. “God knows I been saving’em for long enough with nobody using’em. I hope she will!” I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee(Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told they were oldfashioned, out of style.
“But they’re priceless!” she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. “Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!”
“She can always make some more,” I said. “Maggie knows how to quilt.”
Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. “You just will not understand. The point is these quilts, these quilts!”
“Well,” I said, stumped. “What would you do with them?”
“Hang them,” she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.
Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet made as they scraped over each other.
“She can have them, Mama,” she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her. “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts.”
I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister with something like fear but she wasn’t mad at her. This was Maggie’s portion. This was the way she knew God to work.
When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open.
“Take one or two of the others,” I said to Dee.
But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim-abarber.
“You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car.
“What don’t I understand?” I wanted to know.
“Your heritage,” she said. And then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said, “You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you’d never know it.”
She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and chin.
Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared. After we watched the car dust settle I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed.
1. Discuss the following questions.
1) What’s the importance of the quilt in the story? What does it represent? What does it mean to Dee, Mama and Maggie?
2) What’s the importance of the names in the story? For example, what does Wangero signify in the story?
3) List the characteristics of the three main characters in the story. How do the differences between these two characters add to the conflict?
4) What’s the meaning of the title “Everyday Use”? How does it reflect the theme of the story?
5) What are the characters’ different attitudes towards their family heritage as African-Americans? Who do you think really appreciates the value of the heritage?
2. Tell whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F).
1) Maggie is backward and can’t appreciate the handmade quilts. ( )
2) Maggie will ruin the priceless quilts by putting them to everyday use. ( )
3) Grandma taught Maggie to quilt when she was a girl. ( )
4) Dee wants nice and fashionable things, while Maggie sticks to the traditional way of life. ( )
5) Dee is the one who understands the real values of the heritage. ( )
3. Choose the correct words in the box to complete the following paragraph concerning the information of the story.
Everyday Use is a widely studied and 1) anthologized short story by Alice Walker. It was first published in 1973 as part of Walker’s short story collection, In Love and Trouble. The story is told in first person by the “Mama”, a(n) 2) woman living in the Deep South with one of her two daughters. The story 3) illustrates the differences between Mrs. Johnson and her 4) younger daughter Maggie, who still live 5) in the 6) South, and her educated, 7) daughter Dee, or “Wangero”as she prefers to be called, who scorns her 8) roots in favor of a 9) “ 10) ”identity.