Black Power Movement and Identity Crisis in “Everyday Use”

Black Power Movement and Identity Crisis in “Everyday Use”

Through “Everyday Use” Alice Walker portrays a critical divergence within America’s Black society on the concepts of heritage, education and Black pride. Specifically, the story displays the sudden and revolutionary societal alterations that the Black Power movement in the 1960’s provoked. During that period of time, African-Americans were interested in rediscovering their roots. The story represents, through the characters Maggie and Dee, two countering approaches of dealing with the African-American past and heritage. More to the point, the mother, in her narration, attempts to reflect both her confusion of bringing together her past heritage with her recent rights as well as her rejection of the Black Power movement as an appropriate solution to that confusion.

With her first appearance in the story, Maggie mirrors the detailed physical and psychological consequences of slavery. Walker tries to convey the image of the history of slavery through Maggie’s character. First, a fire in her old house causes Maggie to suffer from scars all over her legs and arms, “she will stand hopelessly in the corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs” (47). Her body’s physical distortion reminds the reader of the African-American painful history. Secondly, her submissive, passive, diffident and easily frightened personality reveals the self-hatred that takes place after a prolonged life of slavery: “she has been like this, chin to chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.”

Dee, a photographer, symbolizes the new Black generation and the problems that they confront in their pursuit of a specific identity. Although the mother proudly utters her daughter’s determination when she said “she was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts” (50), she condemns Dee for her egocentric, aggressive behavior as well as her vocal and demanding personality by giving details such as “she would always look anyone in the eye” (49). In comparison, the Black Power movement shares the same characteristics. This ambivalent attitude towards Dee asserts the mother’s ambivalence towards the Black power movement. On one hand she expresses her pride of the movement’s determination, on the other, she despises their aggression and uncertainty. Moreover, despite her advanced education, Dee lacks knowledge of both her American and African heritage, thereby representing the Black Power movement’s impetuosity. For example, Dee’s ignorance of her American heritage is evident when Dee responds to her mother’s question “What happened to Dee?” by saying that she “couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress” her (53). At this point, we see that she does not recognize that her name descends from her old ancestors and could be traced back even prior to the civil war. Similarly, Dee’s new east African name “Wangero,” her West African costume and her Ugandan greetings depicts her unawareness and misapprehension concerning her African heritage. Again, this portrays the Black Power movement as a superficial one that misunderstands the variety of cultural fragments in Africa.

Dee’s boyfriend exists as an element that contributes to her new adopted identity. Walker expresses her contempt towards the shallowness of the Black movement’s leaders in her characterization of Hakim –a barber. Particularly, Black Muslims, who believe that Islam was their original religion before they were enslaved to come to America, led a reasonable part of the Black Power movement. Here, Hakim, by saying that “farming and raising cattle is not my style” (55), emphasizes his external Muslim image with elements such as his Arabic name, beard, and his Islamic greetings over the practical purpose of Islam. This superficial relationship to his Muslim heritage exemplifies the shallowness of the Black Power movement.

In addition, Walker utilizes Dee’s dress as a means of describing the Black Power movement: “A dress so loud it hurts my eyes. There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face warming from the hear waves it throws out” (52). The blurring dress and its loudness that hurts the viewers delineate the danger and the harm of the Black Power movement’s impulsiveness. However, at the same time, by saying, “as she walks closer, I like it,” Walker, again with an ambivalent outlook, expresses her partial satisfaction with the movement’s intentions. On the whole, Dee’s former disrespectful actions, which imply her renouncement of her American heritage, echo the movement’s rejection of its American heritage.

As the mother contrasts the two characters, we can deduce that Maggie’s and Dee’s dissimilar personalities account for the permanent conflict between them. Their conflict represents the clash between the ignorant past and the sophisticated present. The burning of the house symbolizes this disagreement:

Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie’s arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes? I’d wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much. (49-50)

In other words, Dee ignites the fire because she wants to eradicate the shameful past. Meanwhile, Maggie gets caught inside the house and stuck in the fire, meaning that she embraces and holds on to her heritage. The house represents the past and the burning personifies the Black Power movement: “No doubt when Dee sees it she will want to tear it down” (51). Each sister takes a different path: one stays in the house and holds on to her heritage and the other burns it and moves along with the revolution. “You ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you’d never know it” (59). In fact, Dee views Maggie because of her attitudes and appearance as a shame for the Black Power movement. In other words, Maggie is just a painful memory of the past that should be abandoned.

Quilts also contribute to the continuing conflict between Maggie and Dee, and actually function as a medium that demonstrates their divergence. Quilts, to the mother and Maggie, represent their people and ancestors, reaching out to them meant reaching out to their ancestors. In particular, it constitutes a bond among women of different generations. Thus, putting them to “everyday use” denotes a means of strengthening that connection. However, Dee’s desire to hang the quilts on the wall distances her ancestors and their past from her present reality. Specifically, her action aims to transform the quilts, which represent the past, to merely as a purpose of observation. As a result, hanging the quilts represents her attempt to fetishize the heritage and reduce it to a past experience that neither exists anymore nor contributes to her daily life “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts! She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use” (57). In this regard, she condemns her family for using them daily, and, ironically, deems them ignorant of their heritage. Similarly, the Black Power movement seeks to eradicate their past and American heritage from the African-Americans’ current lives by setting their life apart of their past.

The mother expresses her confusion about the Black Power movement by not showing any bias to either Maggie or Dee until the end of the story. This change occurs because she realizes in the end that the Black Power movement does not acknowledge the enduring hard times that African Americans had to go through in order to survive slavery and obtain civil rights. Throughout her narration, the mother contrasts and criticizes both of her daughters. At the beginning of the story, her initial indecisive standpoint towards the Black Power movement is due to her desire to reconcile her painful history with her recent rights. For example, it is evident that the mother accepts Dee as Wangero initially when she says, “I’ll get used to it” (54). But later she rejects her. Also, the way the mother uses her oldest daughter’s different names reveals the changes in her perspective of the Black Power movement.

Later in the narrative, the mother gradually shifts away from Dee until she accepts Maggie. This is because the mother’s comprehension of heritage, which comes from her love, care and respect for her ancestors, contradicts with Dee’s supposedly educated perception of heritage. Therefore, she makes her final step to accepting Maggie by giving the quilts to her. At the same time, this step also illustrates her final rejection to the Black Power movement:

It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt herself…. This was Maggie’s portion. This was the way she knew God to work. When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never done before: Hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap. (58)

Here she makes her final decision after realizing that Maggie reminds her of her old sister “Big Dee” and her mother. On one hand, the quilts constitute a personal emotional connection between Maggie and her ancestors and heritage. On the other hand, Dee’s new name, costume, greeting, boyfriend and perception of the quilts correspond to her denial of her ancestors and heritage. Moreover, giving Maggie the quilts allows the mother to stay connected with her past, because she saw in Maggie her ancestors. Alternatively, this final scene displays the last time that she calls Dee by the name Wangero, which signifies her ultimate rejection of the Black power movement. It follows that Alice tries to conclude the Black Power movement, represented by Dee, should not define heritage, symbolized by the quilts. Yet, it should be left to the African-American society as a whole, characterized by Maggie, to judge and outline. Meanwhile, her true smile to her sister allows Maggie’s feelings of inferiority to collapse, thereby gaining confidence in herself. Likewise, her psychological agony would come to a healing point when she possesses the quilts and marries. This articulates the satisfactory life that African-Americans would have if they held on to their past and heritage.

Walker not only challenges the Black Power movement’s principles and foundations but shows the inherent dangers that the movement voices to the Black society as well. Even more important, she establishes her central theme successfully by employing the narrator’s standpoint and implicitly investigating its presentation of the cultural conflict, namely, in the characterization of her two daughters. Incidentally, through contrasting herself and Maggie with Dee the mother discloses the educational gap among them. In fact, the mother portrays education as a means of brainwashing and cultural injury: “she used to read to us without pity; forcing word, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two” (50). She implicitly claims that her college and school education contributes to Dee’s identity crisis when she said that “Cows are soothing and slow and don’t bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way” (51).