Here are 4 selections from critical readings of "Everyday Use." This is high level reading, a good introduction to the level of conversation expected at college when looking at literature.
1) read the passages
2) select one passage to work with
3) type and upload to Turnitin.com by 10/15 @7pm
-one sentence summary of the passage
-three sentence paraphrase of the passage
-one sentence direct quote (your intro+direct quotation)
1) Mama's
comparisons between animals and Maggie often seem insensitive. Without a doubt,
the most shocking example of this occurs early in "Everyday Use" when
Mama ponders, "Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by
some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone ignorant
enough to be kind him? That is the way my Maggie walks." Near the end of
the story, Mama describes Maggie in similar terms: "I looked at her hard.
She had filled up her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and it gave her face a
kind of dopey, hangdog look." It is at this moment in the story that Mama
has her epiphany, realizing that her thin, scarred, daughter, deserves the
quilts more than her shapely, favored, educated daughter Dee, who only wants
the quilts because they are now fashionable. Acting on this flash of insight,
Mama does two things that she has never done before: she hugs Maggie and she
says "no" to Dee. Afterward, in the final paragraph, Maggie's face
lights up with a smile that is "real […] not scared." Moreover, Mama
asks her for "a dip of snuff,” and together the enlightened mother and the
faithful daughter sit, enjoying their snuff and each other's company, oblivious
to the "dopey, hangdog look" they presumably present to the world.
Gruesser, John. "Walker's Everyday Use."
The Explicator 61.3 (2003): 183+. General
Reference Center GOLD. Web. 30 Sep. 2011.
2) Before
"rifling" through the "trunk at the foot of [Mama's] bed"
and getting out the quilts, Dee has already removed all the items of everyday
use that she will lay her hands on. The quilts she gets out of Mama's trunk are
quite clearly in a trunk, which is to say not in everyday use. These quilts,
which had been pieced by Mama's mother, and then quilted by her and her sister,
had been tucked away, put in reserve, and not because they were being
temporarily stored for the summer. When a horrified Dee claims that, if the
quilts are given to Maggie, she would use and consequently ruin them, Mama
responds," 'I reckon she would…God knows I been saving 'em for long enough
with nobody using 'em'." As Patricia Mainardi notes, "'The women who
made quilts knew and valued what they were doing: frequently quilts were signed
and dated by the maker, listed in her will with specific instructions as to who
should inherit them, and treated with all the care that a fine piece of art
deserves'" (quoted in Showalter 2001). The quilts in Mama's house had been
placed in reserve because they held a certain value. That Mama had promised
them to Maggie "for when she marries,” as a kind of wedding present or
dowry, attests to their recognized value, and this value is being protected
precisely in their not being put to everyday use.
Whitsitt, Sam. "In Spite of It All: A Reading
of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'." African
American Review 34.3 (2000): 443. Expanded Academic. Web. 30 Sep. 2011.
3) Dee
announces that she is no longer Dee, but "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo."
She has newly adopted an African name since, as she explains: "I couldn't
bear it any longer being named after the people who oppress me." Many
readers point to Dee's proclamation of her new name as the turning point in the
story, the point at which Dee pushes her mother too far. They point out that
Dee is rejecting her family heritage and identity in this scene. Yet it seems
to me that Dee and Mama are both right here. Mama's recounting of the family
history of the name is accurate, but what the critics fail to point out is that
Dee's assertion that the name comes from "the people who oppress" her
is also accurate. While most readers see Mama and Maggie as having a
"true" sense of heritage as opposed to Dee's false or shallow
understanding of the past, both Mama and Dee are blind to particular aspects of
heritage. Dee has much to learn about honoring her particular and individual
family history, but Mama has much to learn about the history of African
Americans in general, and about fighting oppression. Although each is stubborn,
both Dee and Mama do make a concession to the other here. Dee tells Mama that
she needn't use the new name if she doesn't want to, while Mama shows her
willingness to learn and to use the name.
Farrell, Susan. "Fight vs. Flight: a
re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'." Studies in Short Fiction 35.2 (1998):
179+. Expanded Academic. 30 Sep. 2011.
4) Wangero
despises her sister, her mother, and the church that helped to educate her. Her
quest is ultimately selfish, and Walker focuses the reader's growing dislike
for the heroine in her indifference to Maggie. Maggie represents the multitude
of black women who must suffer while the occasional lucky "sister"
escapes the ghetto. Walker symbolizes this by the burning of the original home
and Maggie who lives with the scars of this fire, a conflagration Wangero had
welcomed. While Wangero did not set the fire, she delighted in its obliteration
of the house that represented everything she sought to escape. This burned
house represents a history of violence from slavery to the pervasive inner-city
violence of subsequent decades. The fire, that is, is the African American
past, is a conflagration from which assorted survivors stumble forward, and
covers like Maggie with scars of the body or like Wangero with scars of the
soul.
Cowart, David. "Heritage and deracination in
Walker's 'Everyday Use.' (Alice Walker)." Studies in Short Fiction 33.2 (1996): 171+. Expanded Academic.. 30
Sep. 2011.
Junot Diaz, a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic, is a professor, writer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.
He is the author of Drown and The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. Diaz is currently the fiction editor at Boston Review and the Nancy Allen professor at MIT.
Baratunde Thurston is a politically-active,
technology-loving comedian from the future. He co-founded the black
political blog, Jack and Jill Politics, and served as Director of
Digital for The Onion before launching the comedy/technology
startup Cultivated Wit. He resides in Brooklyn, lives on
Twitter, and has over thirty years experience being black. He writes the
monthly backpage column for Fast Company, and his first book, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller. 
Tayari Jones is the author of Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow. Her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta, won the Huston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction, "Novel of the Year" by Atlanta Magazine, and the "Best Southern Novel of the Year" by Creative Loafing Atlanta. Her most recent novel, Silver Sparrow, was selected as among the best novels of 2011 by Library Journal, Slate, and Salon. Currently, she is an assistant
professor in Rutgers-Newark University's MFA program.
