Everyday Use - Alice Walker

Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia she is an African American author and poet. Was the youngest of eight children and was starting writing when she was eight years old privately. In 1952, Walker was wounded in the right eye by a shot from a BB gun fired by her brother and when they finally brought her to a physician a week later, she was permanently blind in that eye. A disfiguring layer of scar tissue formed over it, rendering the previously outgoing child self-conscious and painfully shy. Stared at and taunted, she felt like an outcast and turned for solace to reading and to writing poetry. When she was 14, the scar tissue was removed and she became valedictorian and was voted most-popular girl, as well as queen of her senior class. She got married on March 17, 1967 in New York City to Melvyn Roseman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. Married on March 17, 1967 in New York City. Had one daughter and continues today to be an activist in racism, Sexism and violence. She has written over 20 poems, novels, and short stories combined.

Similarities were that maggie got burned and was shy and seemed self conscious and in real life alice got shot in the eye and was shy about her eye. Also in the story the family lived in poverty and didn't have a lot of nice things and money and neither did she
(1) Everyday use could be about the quilts, when mama said that they don't use them and she would like for maggie to use them everyday. Or it could be that everyday they used something from their heritage. I think she chose it to say that some people use things from their heritage everyday and barely even notice.
(2) Dee describes heritage as things that were made by hand and things that need to be preserved. And maggie and mama see it as things that you use and continue to make or add on to. And I think alice wants us to agree on mama's definition of heritage.
(3) It is ironic because in the beginning her mom set her as a prissy girl that wanted the finer things. And also its ironic because she wears a bright dress, and gold earrings and bracelets but is acting like the black rights type of girl with the african name yet still seems all about style and finer things. (4) If Dee was the narrator I think she would be complaining about the way she was living and the way her mom is and the way she looks. And then change it up and be talking about name change and about how the "white people bring her down".
If maggie was the narrator I think she would talk about what happen to her with the burn. How she feels about her mom and the way her sister acts and that she wishes she was her and talk more about her feelings.(5) Quilts - symbol of their elders and bits and pieces of them
Polaroid - to take pictures of what dee calls "heritage" and how they live.

Butter dish - what dee wanted to use to make like kind of an artistic heritage symbol.