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Raj Duong

October 2, 2017

ENGL 376: Southern Literature

Professor Graybill

Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, a southern town where most

African Americans toiled at the difficult job of tenant farming. She grew up poor, being the youngest

daughter of eight children, in the segregated South. When the author was merely eight years old she

suffered a severe injury which helped shape and create her writer’s voice. She withdrew, thinking she

was grotesque and disfigured, she became shy and timid, and often reacted to insults that were not

intended to do so. Walker was a fantastic student and was later rewarded with a scholarship to attend

Spelman College in 1961. Then later attended Sarah Lawrence College in New York City to graduate in

1965. Walker then later worked as a social worker after her college years, to become an active member

of the Civil Rights Movement.

All these experiences including the accident when she was eight years old allowed her to be

shaped as the novelist, which was apparent in her most famous work The Color Purple. The actual color

purple was a combination of the stability of blue and red energy combined to be a symbol of royalty, as

only royalty could afford it along with its extravagance, and notions of nobility, power, and even

wisdom, creativity and dignity. The Color Purple, was pre-WWI during the 1910s-40s, following the life

of the main protagonist Ceile for a majority of her life. Written in the form of letters to God, it was

intimate, confessional and free, it was so raw and confessional the letters were her own private journal.

From an abusive father to an abusive husband and away from her family those letters were her only
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escape. The title The Color Purple itself was an allegory in Celie’s life, that God created the color purple

for the good and beautiful things in the world and Celie had no concept of that color because she was

just surviving physically. The Color Purple was Walker’s most famous work. (Walker).

In Everyday Use, Barbara Christian found the work in the collection In Love and trouble: Stories

of Black Women “to be "pivotal" to all of Walker's work in its evocation of black sisterhood and black

women's heritage of quilting.” (Poetry Foundation 1). Everyday Use was a mother’s relationship with

her two daughters. Gradually the mother begins to reject her oldest daughter and the superficial vales

she holds, in favor of the younger more practical one. Quilts held a symbolic point in Walker’s stories in

Everyday Use, the eldest daughter Dee,

After dinner, she flippantly decides to take the churn dasher, even though she has no knowledge

of its history (412). Later, when she decides to take the quilts, she says, “These are all pieces of

dresses Grandma used to wear. She did all the stitching by hand” (412). The quilts were

actually made by Grandma Dee, Big Dee, and Mama, and included scraps of clothing that

belonged to both of her grandparents, as well as her great-grandparents and her great-great

grandfather (412). Dee’s lack of knowledge concerning her family is symbolic of the Black Power

movement’s disregard for its American heritage. (White 1).

Dee was a representation of the Black Power Movement and although Walker never outright criticized

the movement but ’” Dee’s ignorance of her adopted African heritage is matched by her ignorance of

her actual American heritage.” (White 1). In abandoning her American heritage for her African one, Dee

represents how the movement forgotten their own family and American Heritage, in terms of identity

they had none. The other daughter however did not represent the Black Power Movement or will be the

poster child for it of the 60s-70s, Walker created her to be a reminder of African American heritage

before and after the Civil War. “This depiction of Maggie is reminiscent of the “yes sir, no ma’am” Negro
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heritage from before, and well after the Civil War. Eyes on ground, feet in shuffle – Maggie will not be

the poster girl for the Black Power movement. They would prefer that she remain inconspicuously in

the corner. This denial of American heritage is evident in Dee’s lack of interaction with Maggie. Dee

does not even speak to Maggie until she is angrily leaving the house at the end of the story” (White 1).

Walker was a great proponent of the use of symbolism and the functional use of her story titles, from

the color purple in The Color Purple, to the everyday use of a churn dasher and quilts Everyday Use,

Dee’s wish to put the items on display without knowing the family’s history behind was Walker’s

attempt to challenge the movement in that they cannot abandon their American heritage because it is

real, not the beautiful and colorful African heritage that they form for themselves to reject the painful

memories of slavery and injustice.

Works Cited

“Alice Walker.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-walker.

WALKER, ALICE. COLOR PURPLE. ORION BOOKS LTD, 2017.

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White, David. ““Everyday Use”: Defining African-American Heritage.” White. “Everyday Use”: Defining

African-American Heritage., Purdue North Central Literary Journal, 2001,

www.luminarium.org/contemporary/alicew/davidwhite.htm.