Everyday Use

The situational irony at the heart of “Everyday Use” is the fact that Dee considers herself to be resisting racism and oppression when, in fact, she is indirectly reproducing it. While she is clearly trying to undermine white supremacy by giving herself a new African name (Wangero), dressing in African attire, and embracing her family heirlooms, she indirectly rejects certain aspects of the Southern Black culture she comes from. For example, in renaming herself, she erases her connection to her mom’s sister Dicie, after whom she was named.

Dee’s desire for her grandmother’s hand-sewn quilts also indirectly reproduces racism. This is because she does not want the quilts for their utility, but so that she can hang them up on the wall as art objects, an orientation that mimics how some elitist white Americans aestheticize everyday objects of other cultures. The oppressive edge to Dee’s coveting of the quilts comes across in the following passage (as narrated by her mother):

I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they were old-fashioned, out of style.

“But they’re priceless!” she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. “Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!”

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After a lifetime of hating her impoverished family’s small house (and all that it contained), Dee returns home for a visit and suddenly covets all of the family heirlooms—an example of situational irony:

“Oh, Mama!” she cried […] “I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,” she said, running her hands underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee’s butter dish. “That’s it!” she said. “I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.” She jumped up from the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber by now.

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