The issue with Dee’s name change presents a good example of her misunderstanding. Dee has changed her name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo”(328) because she said, “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me”(328). What she meant by ‘oppress me,’ was the taking on of American names of black slaves. However, to Dee’s mother, the name Dee is symbolic to their family heritage. She can trace the name back to the time of the Civil War (328). The name Dee is significant to the mother because it belonged to much-loved family members.
Another instance that shows Dee’s confusion of her heritage, surfaces in her thoughts toward the quilts and other household items. Although Dee refuses the names of her heritage, she admires their handmade items, such as the handmade bench made when the family couldn’t afford to buy chairs for the table (329). It never occurs to Dee that the quilts and the handmade heirlooms are symbols of oppression, as she also says of her name. It goes the show that her appreciations for household items tend to be handmade, rather than any real meaning of her heritage. Also, before she went away to college, she was offered a quilt. However, she turned it down saying it was “old-fashioned, and out of style,”(330).
When Dee exclaimed that the quilts should be hung, and not put to ‘everyday use’ (330), it revealed a final point to her misunderstandings of her heritage. While the mother states that, “I promised to give them quilts to Maggie…”(330), Dee complains that she might put them to ‘everyday use’. When the mother asks what Dee would do with the quilts, Dee exclaims she would, “Hang them”, and also says that the quilts might turn to rags within 5 years if Maggie were to have them (330). However, this is what the mother wants, this was how she was going to pass on the heritage to her children, to put the quilts to ‘everyday use’. Instead of telling them about their heritage, she wanted to have them live it. Since Grandma Dee and Big Dee taught Maggie how to quilt, it was only fair to have Maggie receive the quilts, because “this was the way she knew God to work,” (330). This was their heritage. Yet, Dee did not understand this, and that is why she blames her mother and sister for not understanding their heritage (331).
Overall, the story proved how Dee was confused of her own heritage, and illustrated the mother’s idea of what heritage is. What Dee understands is the history and heritage of others, yet has not arrived at a stage of self- understanding. Therefore, if Dee were to receive the quilts and hang them, she would be hanging up their heritage with it, and ending their heritage for herself and her future children.
