Unit ONE. post FOUR

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker.

I would like to comment on how this work especially ties into the theme of this unit. Identity. In the beginning of the story, the speaker and her two daughters are a lower class African American family living in a small shack. Dee, the oldest goes away for school and Maggie and her mother are left at home. This story picks up with Maggie and her mother waiting for Dee to come visit. This is where identity comes in. Dee had participated in one of the Back to Africa movements that were oh so popular in the early twentieth century. This is apparent by the way she speaks. For example, her greeting to her mother and younger sister includes her telling her mother that her names is "Not 'Dee,' Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!" (Walker). I think that the point of the story is that identity does not lie in cultural past, rather it lies with your family, how you were raised, and what you were taught to believe. This story is deceptively sad in the end because Dee, in trying to discover her identity and heritage, abandoned what really defined her personality, her identity, her true self. This Story paints a vivid picture message that we do not have to look far to find what we really are. When understood, this message is especially powerful when it is expressed ironically as in this work.