Everyday Use by Alice Walker

Everyday Use by Alice Walker is a short story about the great effort for identity and the ability to translate that identity between a mother and daughter. Taking place in rural Georgia, the story is narrated by the mother as she awaits a visit by her daughter Dee, returning home after a long absence.When Dee finally shows up she is wearing a fancy dress down to the ground even in the sweltering summer, she is wearing gold earrings and bracelets dangle, she is with a man whose Islamic name her mother cannot pronounce, and she has changed her name.
While eating Dee/Wangero announces that she wants to take with her the milk churn top and dasher as well as two quilts, artifacts from her family’s past. She especially wants the quilts because they were stitched by hand by her grandmother from her grandmother’s dresses, but hDee/Wangero and boyfriend leave, explaining haughtily that they are too ignorant to understand their own heritage and telling Maggie that it’s not too late to try and make something of herself. Maggie and mother end the story by enjoying some snuff until bedtimers mother announces that she has promised to give Maggie the quilts when she gets married.