Theme in Everyday Use.

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Theme in Everyday Use

  When coming to Black Culture, the American black people seem to be in a dilemma. Having inhabited in the New World for centuries, they have accepted many opinions that the white people hold, and in many ways they are exactly like the white people, except for the black color of their skin. However, the American black people do not completely forget their own culture, which, though, has been fading away through the long cruel slavery and the Americanization after. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, their awareness of their own culture has come to a new height. Many American black people change their names, turn to African clothes, event go back to Africa to seek their roots, to show their enthusiasm towards and understanding of their own black culture.

Meanwhile, many black people are thinking: How to understand black culture? Who can carry on the black root in the multi-cultural modern American society? Alice Walker, a genius black woman writer, answers in her story “Everyday Use”: understanding culture is never as superficial as changing for a cultural name or wearing cultural costumes; nor it is as complicated as knowing all the things about one’s own culture. It is something more and deeper, but simpler and more natural: to respect it, to take it as a part of life and way of living.

In this story, Mama, a black woman, the first person narrator, talks about her two daughters. Sister Dee is a beautiful, sophisticated college graduate, who lives a modern and successful life in the city. Mama, who has made Dee’s successful life possible, has stayed behind in the countryside with a younger daughter Maggie, who is a painfully shy, ungaining girl. Maggie and Mama are living in an old country life, which is sometimes favored by a whirlwind visit by Dee.

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The theme of Everyday Use is successfully expressed in the dialogues between the characters.

‘Well,’ I say, ”Dee”

“No, Mama,” she says “Not ‘Dee’, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!”

“What happened to ‘Dee’?”

“She’s dead,” Wangero says, “I couldn’t bear it any more being named after people who oppress me!”

“You know as well as me, you was named after your aunt Dicie.” I said. Dicie was my sister. She named Dee. We called her ‘Big Dee’ after Dee was born.

‘But who was she named after?’ asked Wangero.

“I guess after Grandma Dee.” I said.

“And who is she ...

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