Everyday Use

Big Dee is a minor yet symbolically important character in Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use." Although she never appears as a living presence on the page—existing solely in Mama Johnson's memories and the objects she left behind—her legacy is central to the story's conflict regarding heritage and identity.

Big Dee was Dee's (Wangero's) aunt and Mama's sister-in-law, remembered as the woman who first taught the family’s quilting tradition to the next generation. Together with Grandma Dee, she pieced and stitched the very quilts that spark the story's main conflict: the ones Dee wants to hang as folk art, while Mama ultimately gives them to Maggie for everyday use. Mama recalls Big Dee teaching Maggie how to quilt, which directly challenges Dee's claim that Maggie would "put them to everyday use" as a slight against their value.

Big Dee's key qualities—filtered through Mama's memories—are practicality, generosity, and a hands-on engagement with craft. She embodies the authentic transmission of culture: knowledge passed down through action rather than display. Her name carries a subtle irony; while Dee (Wangero) has renamed herself to reclaim her African heritage, Big Dee embraced that heritage daily without any conflict.

Even though she is absent from the action, Big Dee serves as a moral benchmark, quietly highlighting the gap between Dee's performative cultural pride and Maggie's sincere inheritance.

Dee, who renames herself Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, is the older daughter of Mama Johnson and the story's main antagonist in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use." Educated, stylish, and self-assured, Dee returns to her rural Southern home flaunting a new name, a new boyfriend, and an adopted African aesthetic — dashiki, sunglasses, and dangling earrings — which signals her rejection of the very community she came from. Her journey is marked by ironic self-contradiction: she left her roots in shame (Mama remembers Dee's blatant disdain for their house and her relief when it burned down), yet now she seeks to claim those roots as cultural artifacts. This contradiction comes to a head in the quilt scene, where Dee demands the hand-stitched quilts — created from scraps of family clothing by Grandma Dee and Big Dee — to display as folk art, while Maggie intends to actually use them. Dee presents her request as a matter of cultural preservation, but Walker reveals it as appropriation: Dee fails to recognize that "everyday use" is the preservation. Her prominent traits include ambition, aesthetic intelligence, and a performative identity that values display over genuine connection. She is well-read and persuasive but emotionally exploitative — photographing the homestead like a tourist and dismissing Maggie's quiet claim to inheritance. When Mama, in a rare act of defiance, gives the quilts to Maggie, Dee leaves with a condescending remark, telling Maggie she doesn’t understand her "heritage." This moment solidifies Dee's arc as one defined by self-defeating pride.

Grandma Dee is a deceased ancestral figure in Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" (1973). Though she never appears as a live character, her influence is felt powerfully throughout the narrative. She is the original maker—or co-maker with Big Dee—of the two quilts that lie at the heart of the story's main conflict. Made from scraps of family clothing, including parts of a Civil War–era uniform worn by Great Grandpa Ezra, the quilts embody the living, tactile memory of Black heritage passed down through generations of women.

Grandma Dee's importance stems from what she created and what she symbolizes. Mama remembers how Grandma Dee and Big Dee taught Maggie to quilt, linking the craft to a continuous chain of domestic artistry and familial love. When Dee (Wangero) demands the quilts to display on a wall, she invokes Grandma Dee's name as cultural capital while simultaneously breaking the very continuity Grandma Dee represented. Mama's choice to give the quilts to Maggie—who will use them as Grandma Dee intended—defends Grandma Dee's legacy against its commodification.

As a character, Grandma Dee serves as a moral and thematic anchor: she embodies heritage that is lived and practiced rather than merely displayed or aestheticized. Her absence makes her presence even more impactful, as each stitch in the quilts reflects her hands and her world.

Hakim-a-barber is Dee's (Wangero's) companion—likely her boyfriend, though the narrator keeps their relationship intentionally ambiguous—in Alice Walker's "Everyday Use." He’s a minor character, but one loaded with symbolism, representing the story's critique of performative cultural identity. With a beard and hair that "stood straight out like a funky mule tail," he greets Mama with an attempted embrace that she skillfully avoids, and he offers the family a grand salaam. When Mama asks if he’s married to Dee, he quietly mentions that he doesn’t believe in marriage, a comment that subtly unsettles her traditional views. At the dinner table, he refuses to eat the pork and collard greens, explaining that he follows a beef-only diet due to his religious beliefs, but he happily digs into the collards and cornbread, a contradiction Mama notes with dry humor. His adopted name—a phonetic twist on "a barber," hinting at his trade—emphasizes Walker's ironic message that his new identity is more of a costume than a genuine heritage. He stays out of the main conflict over the quilts, acting as a passive, almost decorative figure. Through his brief appearances, Walker uses him as a foil to showcase how Dee's cultural awakening leans more toward aesthetic self-styling than a true connection to her ancestral roots.

John Thomas is a minor but significant character in Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use." He is Maggie Johnson's husband, mentioned only briefly toward the end when Mama reveals that Maggie has married him and moved into her own home. Although he never appears directly in the story and has no dialogue, his presence carries important thematic weight. Maggie's marriage to John Thomas represents a modest yet genuine step forward in her life, providing her with stability and belonging that starkly contrasts with Dee's dramatic self-reinvention.

John Thomas is described as having "mossy teeth" and a good sense of humor—details that, while minimal, humanize him and suggest an ordinary, down-to-earth life in the same rural community where Mama and Maggie live. His acceptance of Maggie, a young woman marked physically and emotionally by a childhood house fire, implicitly affirms her worth in a way that the more vocal characters in the story sometimes do not.

His role in the narrative is more about reflection than action: Mama's final image of Maggie smiling and dipping snuff in the yard with John Thomas captures the emotional resolution of the story. This sense of domestic contentment—humble, unremarkable, and genuine—serves as Walker's quiet counterargument to Dee's performative cultural pride. Thus, John Thomas symbolizes grounded, everyday life over curated heritage.

Maggie Johnson is the younger daughter of Mama in Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" (1973). She lives at home with Mama on their rural Georgia property and serves as the story's quiet moral center, reflecting a genuine and practiced connection to her family's heritage. Physically and emotionally scarred from a house fire in her childhood, Maggie moves through the story with a characteristic shuffle and downcast eyes—Mama describes her as walking "chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle"—which conveys a profound shyness and low self-esteem shaped by years spent in the shadow of her more confident sister, Dee.

Maggie's journey is one of subtle yet meaningful empowerment. For much of the story, she remains passive, even willingly offering the family quilts to Dee upon request, stating that Dee can have them as if her own desires don't matter. The turning point arrives when Mama, in a rare impulsive moment, grabs the quilts from Dee and places them in Maggie's arms. Maggie's response—a genuine smile, "not a scared smile"—marks a quiet yet significant moment of recognition and self-worth.

Her key traits include humility, resilience, and a genuine, lived understanding of family craft: she learned to quilt from Grandma Dee and Big Dee and actually plans to use the quilts, rather than just display them. This practical, unpretentious relationship with heritage sharply contrasts with Dee's aestheticized, performative one. Walker uses Maggie to argue that true cultural inheritance is lived, not curated.

Mama (Mrs. Johnson) serves as the first-person narrator and moral center of Alice Walker's "Everyday Use." She is a large, strong Black woman who does physical farm work—she describes herself as capable of killing and cleaning a hog and working outside all day—rooting the story in the rural South. She candidly acknowledges having rescued Maggie from a house fire years ago, an event that left Maggie scarred and timid, and Mama carries a quiet guilt over that trauma. In a revealing daydream sequence, Mama admits that she imagines a television version of herself—thin, witty, and quick—the kind of mother Dee would prefer, highlighting her awareness of Dee's judgment and her own insecurities.

Mama's journey shifts from passively accommodating Dee's demands to making a decisive stand for herself. During Dee's visit, Mama tolerates her daughter's choice to rename herself "Wangero," her appropriation of household items as folk artifacts, and her condescension toward Maggie. The climax unfolds when Dee insists on taking the hand-stitched quilts promised to Maggie. In a rare, almost instinctive moment, Mama grabs the quilts from Dee and hands them to Maggie—an action she describes as something she "never had done before." This moment encapsulates Mama's core traits: deep-rooted practicality, a quiet yet fierce sense of justice, and an understanding that heritage is something lived, not merely displayed. By the story's conclusion, she sits peacefully with Maggie in the yard, having chosen authentic continuity over performative pride.

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," education and knowledge serve as a dividing line within the Johnson family, revealing that formal schooling can both elevate and alienate. Dee comes home from college noticeably changed — she's renamed herself Wangero, embraces a pan-African style, and speaks with a newfound authority that she uses as a badge over her mother and sister. Her education has provided her with a way to appreciate the family's quilts, butter churn, and dasher; however, this same perspective turns living objects into mere artifacts. She intends to display the quilts on a wall, freezing them as symbols of heritage that she can explain to others — for Dee, knowledge transforms into a means of display and ownership.

In contrast, Maggie embodies knowledge through her hands. She learned quilting directly from Grandma Dee and Big Dee, and Mama observes that Maggie could create new quilts from memory. Her understanding is practical and ongoing, not academic or retrospective. The story subtly emphasizes that this type of knowledge — gained through touch, repetition, and daily use — is just as sophisticated as any formal education.

Mama's own disrupted education lingers in the background. She remembers how a school closure cut short her formal education in second grade, yet she understands the significance of the family's quilts more clearly than her college-educated daughter. The pivotal moment when Mama takes the quilts from Dee and hands them to Maggie also reflects a deeper understanding: the knowledge that sustains a tradition holds more weight than the knowledge that simply honors it.

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," family serves less as a source of comfort and more as a dividing line where conflicting ideas of identity and inheritance clash. The central conflict of the story revolves around two quilts—made from scraps of family clothing—that Dee, now calling herself Wangero, wants to display as folk art, while Maggie plans to use them until they fall apart. The quilts represent more than just heritage; they reflect two distinct approaches to belonging within a family: performance versus practice.

Mama's narration subtly outlines the emotional landscape of the household. She envisions a more polished version of herself—thinner and funnier, the mother Dee expects—but quickly dismisses this fantasy, grounding the story in a stark reality. This moment of self-awareness reveals how Dee's aspirations have long left Mama feeling inadequate in her own home.

Dee's choice to rename herself marks a significant break: she tells Mama that keeping her old name would mean honoring the people who oppressed her, severing the generational connection that Mama and Maggie actually embody. Her arrival with a companion, her photographing of the house as if it were an artifact, and her newfound interest in butter churns and dasher handles she once rejected frame family history as something to be curated rather than a living tradition to be continued.

The turning point of the story occurs when Mama snatches the quilts from Dee's grasp and hands them to Maggie. In this rare moment, Mama asserts herself, redefining family loyalty not as submission to the most educated or outspoken member, but as acknowledgment of those who have remained, who have learned, and who will carry on the family's legacy through use rather than display.

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," home is not just a sentimental setting; it serves as a battleground for identity, memory, and inheritance. Mama's yard — tidy and hard-packed dirt that she cares for like a living room — shows from the start that home is actively nurtured, not merely occupied. Mama's pride in that clean yard is tied to her identity, grounding her in a tradition of practical, hands-on care.

The house itself becomes a point of contention when Dee returns from college, now calling herself Asalatou, and starts photographing the homestead as if it were a museum exhibit rather than a place where people still live and cook. Her view of the house through the camera indicates her emotional distance: to her, home has transformed into raw material for a curated identity instead of a space of belonging.

The quilts bring the conflict into sharp focus. Mama had promised them to Maggie, who learned to quilt from their grandmother, the one whose hands stitched the pieces together. Dee sees the quilts as folk art meant to be displayed — preserved by being taken out of use. For Maggie and Mama, displaying them would disconnect them from the domestic life that originally gave them significance. Walker emphasizes that home is not maintained through display but through ongoing habitation and practical use.

Mama's pivotal choice to take the quilts from Dee and give them to Maggie reflects her understanding of what home truly means: not a heritage to be curated from afar, but a living legacy passed down through daily practice, touch, and presence.

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," identity isn’t just something we inherit; it’s something we perform and negotiate — and the story examines each character through that struggle.

Dee's change is the most provocative aspect of the story. She shows up with her new name, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, rejecting the name passed down through generations of women in her family because she sees it as belonging to her oppressors. Walker quickly challenges this move: Mama quietly traces the name Dee back through her aunts and grandmother, revealing that the "oppressor's" name is actually part of their family heritage. Dee's renaming, intended to reclaim an African identity, ends up disconnecting her from the specific, local lineage that has influenced her.

The quilts highlight this argument. Dee wants to display them — framing them as folk art, turned into abstract cultural symbols. However, the quilts are made from the dresses of Grandma Dee and a Civil War–era great-grandfather's uniform; they represent identity in a tangible way, crafted from the very fabric of their lives. In contrast, Maggie understands the stitches because she learned them directly from Grandma Dee. Her knowledge is lived and continuous, not simply a curated experience.

Mama's pivotal moment — taking the quilts from Dee and giving them to Maggie — represents a rare instance of self-awareness for a narrator who has mostly yielded to Dee's assertiveness. It suggests that identity rooted in everyday, practical use is more genuine than identity displayed for show.

Even the yard Mama has swept clear serves as a motif: a space shaped by routine and effort, rather than aesthetics — identity expressed through actions rather than declarations.

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," class and inequality aren't just abstract social concepts; they are palpable pressures felt within a family's own yard and home. The story starts by highlighting this contrast: the narrator describes her body in terms of labor — her hands are rough from farm work, and her physique reflects a life of hard work — while her daughter Dee arrives in a bright, flowing dress and gold earrings, her look a calculated display of upward mobility. Dee has gained education, urban sophistication, and a new African name, which she uses as symbols of cultural capital that implicitly push her mother and sister Maggie down a rung.

Walker places the quilts at the heart of this class tension. For Dee, they are folk art meant to be framed and showcased — items valued for their aesthetic and symbolic meaning, appreciated by a culturally savvy audience. For Mama and Maggie, the quilts are practical, tactile, and personal: Maggie learned to quilt from the grandmother who made them. From this perspective, Dee's wish to display them on a wall is an act of class appropriation — she seeks to transform working-class craftsmanship into middle-class decoration.

The story also subtly critiques the romanticization of poverty from afar. Dee takes photos of the house she once regarded with shame, now viewing it as picturesque. Her friend's condescending half-smile suggests that the family's material struggles have turned into a form of aesthetic resource for outsiders who possess cultural knowledge. Walker's closing image — Mama pulling the quilts back and giving them to Maggie — firmly rejects the notion of allowing inherited inequality to be glossed over or aestheticized.

In Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use," the past isn't just a static record; it’s a dynamic space that each character experiences differently, and these differing perspectives fuel the conflicts throughout the story.

The quilts are the central memory-object of the narrative. Made from scraps of old dresses, a Civil War uniform, and a worn work shirt, they are literally pieced together from the family's history. When Dee, who now calls herself Wangero, insists on hanging them on a wall, she views the past as an aesthetic artifact—something to be appreciated from afar. In contrast, Mama's instinct to give the quilts to Maggie—who will use and eventually wear them out—emphasizes that the past thrives through active engagement, not just preservation.

Dee's name change highlights this conflict. By renaming herself Wangero to pay tribute to her African heritage, she disconnects herself from the grandmother she was named after—a woman whose memory is woven into the very quilts she wishes to display. While her name change appears to be an act of reclamation, Walker illustrates it as a form of forgetting: Dee distances herself from a specific, local history in favor of a more abstract, generalized identity.

Maggie's scarred body serves as a living memory. Her burns from the house fire mean she physically carries the family’s losses; she navigates the yard with a careful awareness of what has been taken from her. Mama observes that Maggie knows the quilts' patterns by heart and could recreate them—implying that for her, the past is a skill embodied in practice, rather than a mere relic.

The yard that Mama keeps swept clean—hard, packed dirt—acts as a subtle motif: a space sustained through ritual labor, where the past isn’t hidden or showcased but simply lived day by day.