Everyday Use: Heritage

Almost all ethnicities preserve culture, heritage and or tradition that they cherish and pass down to the next generation. Heritage and tradition can be expressed in any form the ethnicity chooses to use. Some cultures use food as a way to express. For instance, in my Arabian culture, we like to cook mostly with grains. A popular grain dish is couscous. It consists of grains made from semolina. Just as food is a big part of culture and heritage, it is not limited solely to food. Most cultures use objects to symbolize what their culture represents. In African American culture, the arts, literature, agricultural skills, food, music, language, and clothing styles have been contributed and passed down to the descendants by the first generation African Americans that came to America. For many years language has been passed down and has evolved in the form known to Americans today as Ebonics. Music is another form of culture which has continued to exist through what society knows as rap, hip hop, and rhythm & blues. Another big part of African American culture is food. The cultivation and use of many agricultural products in the United States such as yams, peanuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton, which can be traced to African influences. African American foods reflect creative responses to racial and economic oppression. Under slavery, African Americans were not allowed to eat better cuts of meat, and after Emancipation many often were too poor to afford the better cuts. Soul food, a hearty cuisine commonly associated with African Americans in the South, but also common among blacks nationwide, makes creative use of inexpensive products procured through farming and subsistence hunting and fishing. Pig intestines are boiled and sometimes battered and fried to make “chitterlings,” or "chitlins”. Many of these food traditions are especially predominant in many parts of the rural South. One main problem with heritage is that it can be easily forgotten or misused. In Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use” the importance of heritage is depicted through Mama, who believes that heritage should be handed down and implemented in their lives, Maggie who believes that it should be implemented as well, and Dee who believes that heritage should be showcased like art.

Mama is the mother of two dissimilar daughters, Dee and Maggie. Walker from the get go, portrays Mama sticking to her cultural roots by the way the narrator describes Mama. “In Real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough man-working hands.” (103) and from this quote, one can see Mama as a hard worker. This shows the link between her and the first generation African Americans that were put into slave labor. By Walker using the words “man-working hands” can be linked to hands of the slave workers in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. When working with wooden scythe, it was very common for calluses to develop on a workers hand. Being that Mama is portrayed to being a hands on worker, she stays true to her heritage when Walker describes Mama with those “man-working hands”. Another way Mama is seen incorporating her heritage into her daily life is through work ethics. In the first paragraph of “Everyday Use” Mama is outdoors, sweeping clean her yard, which also served as the narrator mentions, an extended living room. It is clearly shown that Mama still applies her African American agricultural skills. When one thinks of agriculture, livestock is also inserted into the topic. When relating to African heritage, hunting has been a big part of ancient African heritage, even dating back to the tribal days. The narrator does a great job in connecting the ancient African heritage, to the present day with Mama. The narrator draws the link when she describes Mama being able to, “I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire in minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.” (103). the narrator is able to draw a clear image of Mama going back into her heritage. Mama makes a clear belief on what heritage is and means, when both Dee and Maggie, the daughters, want to keep the quilts. Mama promises Maggie that she can have the quilts when she gets married to John Thomas. Maggie wants to be able to use the quilts, just like Mama believes. Mama makes the clear when she says, “I reckon she would. God knows I been saving’em enough with nobody using them” (108) Mama believes that heritage should be used and appreciated. Walker’s character, Mama, seems to have a strong role in “Everyday Use”. Through out the short story, she is shown to represent African heritage itself. One can even argue that Mama is the mother land of her family’s heritage. Mama holds true to her African