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September 25, 2006

A Family's Old and New Heritage

"Everyday Use" begins with Mama and her youngest daughter, Maggie, awaiting the arrival of Mama's eldest daughter, Dee, at their family home. Within the second paragraph of the story, the reader is given a harsh perspective of Maggie's personality and perception of her older sister; Maggie is "homely and ashamed of the burn scars... eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that ‘no' is a word the world never learned to say to her" (106). Alice Walker utilizes Mama's point of view, as well as Mama's flashbacks in time, to convey one family's conflicting views regarding heritage and tradition.
Because the reader is limited solely to Mama's first person point of view and her own descriptive memories regarding Dee's past, the idea of her family's cultural heritage is presented in such a way as to have the reader side with Mama at the conclusion......

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Approximate Word Count: 1570
Approximate Pages: 7 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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