Question

How does the climactic ending turn the tables on Dees’s use of terms like “backward” and “heritage”? In the book Everyday Use by Alice Walker

Answer 1

“Everyday use" by Alice Walker was set in the late 1960s or early 1970s, a tumultuous time when many African Americans were struggling to redefine and seize control of their social, cultural, and political identity in American society.

The time in which “Everyday Use” took place was an era when groups of all ideologies—some peaceful, some militant—arrived on scene. The Black Panthers and Black Muslims were groups created to resist what they saw as a white-oppressive society.

The novel is about an African-American Mama and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee. The plot surrounds The Quilts which are full of the family heritage. And the Mama wants to give two of the most important Quilts to Maggie while Dee wants to prevent the situation arguing that Maggie would not be careful enough to take care of the Quilts and they would get destroyed.

At the ending of the story Dee tell her sister that times are different now, that she would never know what she is missing if she stayed there living with their mother, that clinging to the "heritage" or acting as always she will never progress and do something of her life. That continuing to live in the same way would always make her go "backward" instead of forward.