Everyday Use Summary & Analysis

Walker establishes that Mama is hard working and devoted by describing how Mama painstakingly cleaned the yard for Dee’s arrival. Mama also shows her sense of attachment towards her domestic space. This space includes the yard, which to Mama is an extension of her house— she describes it affectionately as a “living room.” Meanwhile, Maggie’s deep insecurity is immediately clear, as Mama uses words like “homely,” “ashamed,” and “hopeless” to describe her. Maggie’s nervousness about her sister’s visit implies that their relationship is somewhat strained.

When Mama describes her daydream of reconciling with her daughter and all the joy and love that accompanies it, the reader can infer that their relationship thus far has been the opposite of what she describes. In Mama’s wildest fantasies, her reconciliation with her daughter coincides with visions of material wealth (she steps out of a limousine, for example) that do not, apparently, reflect her reality. Walker underlines the dream’s fragility when Mama imagines Dee giving her an orchid, despite the fact that she knows Dee hates that kind of flower in real life. The orchid, as an object, stands in for the gap between Mama’s fantasies and her reality.

As Mama describes her life, it becomes even clearer that her reality is far from television-ready. Mama’s sense of self seems primarily connected to what she can do rather than how she looks. For example, Mama’s clothes are primarily practical rather than stylish.

Mama recognizes the schism between who she is and who she would have to be on such a television show, and thus (presumably) to be loved by Dee. Specifically, when Mama mentions her inability to make eye contact with white men, she connects her own internalized racism with her failure to reconcile with her daughter. Dee’s ability to make eye contact with white men, and thus to challenge the racial expectations of her time, sets her apart from her mother, and indicates both her own sense of empowerment and how that empowerment estranges her from her family. Eye contact, which Walker uses symbolically for the first time here, is presented as an equalizing force, and stands in for resistance to racism— a significance which will become complicated as the story progresses.

As Walker presents Maggie a second time, she emphasizes her lack of self-confidence even more profoundly. Rather than Maggie wearing her clothes, the clothes seem to wear Maggie—they dwarf and obscure Maggie, rendering her shapeless, and giving the reader the sense that Maggie lacks control over the image she projects. When Mama describes the way Maggie walks, she describes Maggie as a wounded animal, highlighting Maggie’s lowly way of carrying herself. When Mama goes on to compare Dee to Maggie, the reader gets the sense that Maggie lives in Dee’s shadow, constantly compared to her prettier, more successful sister, even by her own mother.

The house fire Mama describes clearly traumatized the family, and she repeatedly refers back to the fire throughout the story. In Mama’s flashbacks, she and Maggie were clearly most in danger due to the fire, while Dee watched it from outside. The memory of the fire complicates the symbol of the house as a site of familial love and history, turning the house also into a site of trauma and pain, muddling its joyful image. The fire also seems to have exacerbated Mama’s resentment for Dee for hating their house, which was so loved by Mama and Maggie. It is confusing and embittering that a memory which is so painful for Mama and Maggie could have been a source of liberation and joy for Dee.

Mama’s flashback to the fire triggers a whole series of remembrances of how Dee has hurt her mother and sister over the years. Walker continues to build the sense that Mama and Dee’s relationship is extremely tense as she describes the gap in education between them. Mama notes that she and her church paid for Dee’s education, and so she perceives a stinging lack of gratitude from Dee. Dee’s act of reading to Mama and Maggie is described not as a kindness, but a kind of violence against them, which Walker shows through her choice of aggressive, painful language (burning, forcing, etc.). Walker shows Dee’s education, while liberating for her, to be oppressive and degrading to her family.

Mama suggests that Dee’s desire for “nice things” set her apart from her family as a teenager. Repeatedly, Walker uses differing relationships to objects to establish character. Compared to Maggie, for example, Dee comes across as an aesthetically driven, sophisticated person, with profound interest in expressing herself and her difference from her family.

In this section, Mama connects her lack of education with her inability to question the social conditions that structure her reality. She sets up the idea that education is part of how Dee became such an outspoken opponent to the racism she experiences. In Mama’s mind, education has afforded Dee the ability to question the boundaries of her reality, while Mama’s lack thereof prevents her from daring to do so. Maggie’s existence, however, seems to temper this assumption somewhat, as she has received some limited education (she can read), but lacks the self-confidence and natural intellect to assert herself and demand change.

Once again, Mama thinks about the house in a way that both emphasizes her affection for it (she takes in all the details with an attentive consideration) and her sense of trauma associated with it (she constantly compares it to their house that burned down). The house continues to be a symbol of simultaneous love and trauma, and a site of resentment between Mama and Dee. Dee’s shame about the house and the way her family lives, manifested in her refusal to bring friends there, adds to the sense of the house as a fraught place.

This section allows Walker to cast a slightly more sympathetic light on Dee, as we see her not only as an antagonist to her devoted family, but also as a lonely child who had trouble making friends. This section helps to humanize Dee, and also to adjust our view on Dee’s education, which not only helped her to fight racism and buy expensive things, but also to make friends.

At last, Walker introduces the reader to Dee not only as Mama remembers her, but as she is in reality and at present. Dee arrives with her partner, and Mama’s lack of clarity about whether they are married or not speaks even further to the distance between church-going, traditional Mama and her daughter. Meanwhile, Maggie’s anxiety reaches its apex as she tries to flee into the house. Once Dee steps out of the car, Mama’s intense examination of her wardrobe suggests how distinct Dee’s style choices are. She describes Dee’s clothing as both literally and figuratively noisy: her dress is “loud,” and her bracelets “jingle.” In this way, Dee’s clothes reflect her own outspoken nature. Mama’s decision—and it seems like a decision, coming toward the end of her description of Dee’s outfit—that she likes the dress reflects Mama’s desire to reconcile with her daughter.

Dee and Hakim-a-barber seem to be taking part in a tradition of African-Americans returning to their African roots in an attempt to circumvent the history of white violence against black people. They greet Dee’s family in Luganda and Arabic. The greeting is silly and somewhat awkward, however, since neither Mama nor Maggie speak these languages.

Dee’s photography, which might at first seem sentimental and sweet, becomes peculiar when, as Mama notices, she insists that the pictures include the house and, later, the cow. Dee seems to not be taking pictures of her family as they are as people, but rather as part of the quaint landscape of Dee’s youth. Dee attempts to turn her family into an art object (a well-composed photograph) rather than authentically appreciating how they are as living people.

In this conflict, Walker showcases the difference between Mama and Dee’s worldviews. Dee states that her desire to go by “Wangero,” an African name, rather than her given name, is a result of her desire to escape the system of oppression that her personal history is connected to. Mama, on the other hand, sees Dee’s name as a link to her family history, and to people that Mama knew and loved. Dee is named after her black female ancestors, but, presumably, her Western name came at some point from European roots. As Mama explains the history of Dee’s name, Dee clearly is uninterested in changing her view of it. Despite Dee’s intelligence, she close-mindedly neglects to listen to her mother’s alternate viewpoint on the name’s heritage.

As Mama explains, Dee and Hakim-a-barber communicate via eye contact. In this instance, eye contact again is a power Dee possesses and Mama does not. This time, however, Dee uses it specifically to leave Mama out. Ultimately, Mama, favoring reconciliation, ends the argument by conceding to call Dee “Wangero.”

Mama’s anecdote about her neighbors showcases the intense and violent racism of the society she and Maggie live in. Equally notable, though, is the way that Mama tells the story—the poisoning is situated in a clause modifying Mama’s claim that she walked a mile and a half to see it, not as the main clause of the sentence. Mama views the actual racism, then, as part of the conditions of the events in Mama’s life—something to be taken for granted—rather than the content of it.

Mama seems surprised by Dee’s newfound affinity for the family’s traditional dishes. Dee not only enjoys the food; she obsesses over it somewhat excessively. Dee’s attitude towards her family’s life is completely different than how Mama described her as a teenager—sullen, resentful, and uninterested.

Dee’s changed mindset towards the objects of her upbringing, like her attitude toward the food she grew up with, seems to have completely changed from when she was an adolescent. She now covets them, admiring their antiquity and the family history that she believes they represent. However, Dee’s interest comes across as somewhat out-of-touch. She admires Grandma Dee’s butter dish, but not her own name, which comes from Grandma Dee and her Aunt Dicie..

Despite the infrequency of Dee’s visits, and despite her tense relationship with her family, Dee shamelessly asks to take home the butter churn. She tries to assert her interest in the family history by connecting it to Uncle Buddy, but again the shallowness of Dee’s understanding of her family history becomes clear when Dee incorrectly assumes that Uncle Buddy whittled both the churn top and the dasher. Dee’s reaction to Maggie’s correction—laughter—implies that she does not actually care about the details of her family history, but only an abstract vision of it.

Walker contrasts Dee’s orientation towards her family’s heirlooms and Mama’s. Dee is interested in the representative and decorative value of the family’s possessions. She wishes to turn them into art objects, preserving them but killing any possibility of their use. Mama, on the other hand, pays attention to the ways the objects have been used—she thoroughly knows the objects’ history and admires them not for visual beauty, but as a way of interacting with and building on the past. To Mama, practical use is part of the family tradition.

Dee continues to invasively look for objects to take home rather than catching up with her long-estranged family. As she emerges with the quilts, Mama immediately recognizes not just the quilts themselves, but also the way they were made and with which patterns, and where exactly the fabric came from. Mama’s intimate understanding of these objects stems from the fact that she lives each day in the lifestyle for which the quilts were made. She knows the quilts’ history because she lived it. Her familiarity with the quilts triggers a whole web of interlocking family stories and nuances of ancestors’ lives that Mama has access to due to her active engagement with that history.

When Mama offers Dee the newer, machine-stitched quilts, Dee clearly does not think they are as valuable. Dee privileges the older quilts because they are representative of a more distant past rather than an immediate one. This recalls Dee’s adoption of an African name, from a culture her family hasn’t been a part of for generations, instead of keeping the name Dee, which has much more meaning in the recent past. For Dee, heritage must be fully removed from her current life in order to be appealing. As Dee pulls the quilts from Mama, she seems to have little respect for her mother as an actual person, or the fact that the quilts are Mama’s property.

The difference between Dee’s visual, hollow appreciation of her family’s heirlooms and Mama’s interest in authentic engagement with the past through these objects comes to a head in this argument over the quilts. Dee lords her education over Mama and Maggie, suggesting their lifestyle is “hackward.” By extension, Dee suggests that the culture in which Maggie and Mama live, the culture she supposedly wishes to celebrate by hanging the quilts on her wall, is, itself, “backward.” Dee’s hypocrisy becomes especially evident here: she only admires objects that represent her family’s lifestyle once that way of life is dead. Moreover, Dee’s hypocrisy also shows in her complete change in her relationship to the quilts, which she never wanted before.

Dee is concerned with preserving the family heritage, implying that the heritage would (or should) otherwise disintegrate. For Dee, quilting is already a thing of the past. Mama, on the other hand, sees Maggie as a way of keeping up their culture. Since Maggie can sew new quilts, there’s no need to preserve the culture—it’s still alive and thriving.

Once again, Dee wishes to use her family’s possessions as decorations and deadened symbols of her family’s history, despite the fact that she’s not actually very connected to that more immediate history. In Dee’s mind, the best way to revere her family history is to preserve and aestheticize it, rather than actually use it and live with it.

Walker again portrays Maggie as a character who is so used to not getting her way that she immediately concedes the quilts to Dee. Maggie echoes Mama’s earlier behavior when Mama quickly agreed to call Dee “Wangero” just to keep the peace, and willingly gave up the butter churn.

But this time, Mama is not willing to appease Dee. When Mama gives Maggie the quilts instead of Dee, she breaks the unusual family dynamic, in which Mama and Maggie sacrifice so that Dee can have what she wants—in her own way, Mama is finally “looking someone in the eye” and standing up for herself in this moment. The family heirlooms will now be continually engaged with as a way to maintain a connection to, and build upon, the family’s heritage and the amorphous collection of memories and meaning that this heritage entails. Mama’s win in this fight might be viewed as Walker’s endorsement of Mama’s view of objects and heritage over Dee’s.

Dee’s assertion that her family does not understand its heritage is highly ironic— clearly it is Dee, with her utter removal from the family’s everyday traditions, who lacks understanding of her own heritage. Walker also draws attention to Dee’s lack of understanding despite her education.

Dee cannot leave without adding insult to injury. She clearly shows her contempt for the lifestyle behind the paraphernalia she covets, telling Maggie she “ought to try and make something” of herself, as if to imply she were not something already, once again using her educated status to degrade her family. Dee’s sunglasses at last obscure her dominating eye contact, and Maggie smiles genuinely at them, finally confident in returning her sister’s (albeit invisible) gaze.

The story ends with Mama and Maggie more or less where they started— together in the yard. It is a scene of domestic intimacy and comfort. With Dee gone, Mama and Maggie enjoy their home once again, free of judgment of their way of life and their traditions.