How does Dee feel about her family?

How does Dee feel about her family?

Angered by what she views as a history of oppression in her family, Dee has constructed a new heritage for herself and rejected her real heritage. She fails to see the family legacy of her given name and takes on a new name, Wangero, which she believes more accurately represents her African heritage.

How does Dee feel about her childhood home?

The story centers around Dee’s visit with her family at her childhood home in the Deep South. As a child, Dee was angry, bitter, and resentful towards her family and their poverty. When Dee returns to the family’s house, however, her attitude towards the family’s lifestyle has completely flipped.

How does Dee feel about the house?

In “Everyday Use,” Dee takes pictures of the house because she wants to have material proof of her “heritage.” She isn’t interested in the stories or the traditions of her family so much as she’s interested in physical evidence of her humble origins.

What does Dee do when she arrives to see her family?

how has Dee changed when she arrives to see her family? she changed her name, and wears the hairstyle of someone who has embraced black pride. Why does Dee want the quilts? she wants to hang the quilts to call attention to her African heritage.

How did Dee relate to her family before she left home?

And as much as Dee disliked the house and their living situation, she didn’t hate her family. She simply wanted something different. So, there is the sense that prior to and after Dee left, she’d always loved her family but always wanted them to change (as she would) and become more “cultured.”

Why does Dee want the quilts?

Why does Dee want the quilts? Dee wants the quilts so she can hang them up in her home and remember her heritage. At the end of the story, the mother “snatched the quilts out of Mrs. Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap” (8).

What might Dee’s snapping of Polaroid photographs signify?

Dee is more interested in taking pictures to show her “heritage” to people she wants to impress than she is in actually seeing her mother. By snapping pictures with a Polaroid, then, Dee is presented as a sort of anthropologist, documenting the life of her mother and sister.

What is Dee afraid Maggie will do with the quilts?

But Dee says that Maggie will use the quilts until they turn into rags, and she does not want the quilts to be destroyed. Dee wants to put the quilts on the wall as artwork for her and others to admire. Mama does say that when Dee went away to school that she offered her one of the quilts, which Dee turned down.

How does Dee feel at the end of the story?

At the end of the story, Dee, who was always brighter, better-looking, and favored, is angry because her mother refuses to give the quilts which she, Grandma Dee, and Big Dee made over the years. Maggie who was burned as a child and has never left home, will continue to live there and actually use the quilts every day.

What does Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo mean?

In the story, “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo” is Dee’s new name. Her use of the name symbolizes the “renaming” practice by African-Americans during the heyday of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

How does Dee view her heritage in everyday use?

In the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, Dee’s attitude towards her heritage differs from the attitude of her mother and sister because she views her heritage from the perspective of education and relative wealth. That’s why she can look on everyday objects as mementos and works of art.

Why does Dee want to exclude her family from her education?

What Dee embraces, Mama either does not understand or—more tellingly—Dee does not permit her to understand. This is illustrated by the way Dee insists on reading aloud to Mama and Maggie “without pity,” as Mama says. Dee wants to display her education but at the same time to exclude her family from it.

Who is Dee in everyday use by Alice Walker?

The character of Dee, or Wangero, in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” does not quite accept who she really is or where she really comes from. Instead, she has turned her heritage into a montage of artistic, historical, and eclectic nothings that make up a brand new idea of what she feels is the African heritage.

What does Dee value and what does Mama reject?

What Mama values, Dee rejects. What Dee embraces, Mama either does not understand or—more tellingly—Dee does not permit her to understand. This is illustrated by the way Dee insists on reading aloud to Mama and Maggie “without pity,” as Mama says.