Everyday Use: Genre 1 key example

In the case of “Everyday Use,” Walker is focusing on the complex dynamics between educated Black Americans in the northern United States (who were part of the Black Power movement) and uneducated Black Americans living in the rural South in the 1960s and 1970s. In contrasting these two communities, Walker suggests that educated Black Americans can reproduce classism and elitism, even while touting the importance of embracing the Black community as a whole.

This story is also an example of a family drama, a literary genre that focuses on conflict and relationship dynamics within a family. In this story, Walker focuses on the dynamics between Mama, Dee, and Maggie, as the three women decide what to do with various family heirlooms. In the climactic scene in the story, the three women argue over who will inherit Mama’s mother’s hand-sewn quilts:

“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. […]

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“Imagine!” [Dee] breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.

“The truth is,” I said, “I promised to give them 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.”

This scene is significant as it connects the family tension to cultural tension—Dee, who is a Black nationalist, wants to hang the quilts up, appalled by the fact that Maggie, her uneducated sister who still lives in their childhood home in Georgia, would “be backward enough to put them to everyday use.” In this way, the family tension and the tensions within the Black American community go hand-in-hand.