Tradition And Family In Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use'

In Alice Walker’s Everyday Use themes of tradition and family are brilliantly explored. A divide in tradition is developed through two daughters of a family of African heritage. Dee, Mama’s eldest daughter distanced herself from her mother and younger sister as she moved away in pursuit of an education. Dee’s younger sister Maggie is much more reserved and suffers from a physical handicap due to a fire in their previous home. Their relationships to tradition comes to the forefront when Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, formerly known as Dee returns home, and requests her grandmother’s priceless hand made quilt, made of dresses that her great grandmother used to wear to be put on display as a symbol of her tradition. Mama refuses to give the quilt …show more content…
I can member Grandma Dee without the quilts”. Maggie, having learned to quilt from Grandma Dee, realizes that her grandmother is with her every time she is quilting, not only when the quilt that she made is in her presence. When it come to the topic of tradition I know that family has always been important to me, however I reluctantly admit that I am more of a Dee than I am a Maggie. As soon as I heard this story I immediately thought of one of my family greatest traditions, lonza. Lonza is an extremely peppered cured pork loin that has been a tradition in my father’s side of my family for as far back as the generations can be traced. Growing up my brothers and I always called lonza Nonno’s …show more content…
My mother’s parents watch an absurd amount of garbage day time television, but religiously tune into only the Yankees and Alex Trebeck like clockwork. There is something special about watching an episode and knowing that my grandparents are also sitting in their living room watching the same program and reacting in similar ways. I often watch with my roommates, and by watch with my roommates I mean compete against them to see who can answer the most questions correctly, just as my grandparents did. I remember when I was younger I would wish that I could get as many questions correct as Nana and Poppy. Poppy was strong with American history and could nail close to every question, as he was a high school social studies teacher for thirty years. I wish I could show them how far I’ve come, and how many questions I can now answer. Tradition isn’t something that you can wrap your hands around. Tradition is how you’ve learned to wrap your hands around a lawn mover, a television remote when the clock strikes 7:30, and a slicer for cured pork