Students will use this story as a basis for examining the character development of each daughter and the conflict presented in “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker. The major writing activity for this story is a five-paragraph essay discussing the conflict, character development, and universal theme of the story, for which lesson plans are provided. In addition, students will conduct an interview with an older family member or friend (discussed in the previous section,
Overview of Assignments
)to explore how that person has experienced the issue of skin color. Finally, students will choose a daughter from the story and design a quilt square depicting her character. This square, and all others, will be added to the story quilt on display in the classroom.
“Everyday Use” is narrated by the mother and it is set in the rural South. She and her daughter, Maggie, are awaiting the arrival of Dee, her other daughter. The yard has been carefully raked in anticipation of this event; Maggie and her mother have worked hard on it. The difference between the daughters is made evident immediately, through the narrator’s voice, “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes...She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that no is a word the world never learned to say to her.”1
Introducing Conflict
The differences between the daughters and their roles in the family are focal points for discussion. In fact, the daughters are complete opposites. Dee is the daughter who has left home and was college educated, through money raised by the work and efforts of her mother and younger sister. As Dee is stylish, educated, and self-confident, Maggie is uneducated, physically scarred from a house fire that occurred when she was a child, and accustomed to being in the background. Mama’s dream of appearing on TV with the daughter who has “made it,” and who embraces and appreciates her is the antithesis of Dee’s condescension during this visit. This introduces the conflicts in the storyconflicts about who and what are valued in families and in society, the conflict depicted in the relationship of the sisters, and the conflict between traditional values and contemporary values.
Examining Character Development
The question, “What does it mean to be intelligent?” will be a starting point from which to begin a discussion about the sisters and make connections with their own lives. In a whole group discussion, students will identify each daughter’s talents; their responses will be recorded on the blackboard. They will then reflect on and list the ways in which they are intelligent.
Dee, described as “lighter than Maggie with nicer hair and a fuller figure,”2 is accustomed to getting what she wants. At the time of the visit, we learn that she has taken a new name, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, symbolically obliterating her roots and family.
While “Everyday Use” revolves around Dee’s visit and the mother’s attention is focused on the event, Maggie is a central character. She is the daughter who remained home, rooted in tradition and the old ways. She is the daughter whose work, always in the background, helped raise the money to educate her sister and made it possible for Dee to attend college.
The Issue of Color: Discussion, Interview, and Summary
Students will discuss the issue of skin color, using the question “What is the significance of the description of Dee having a lighter complexion than her sister?” This will speak to a custom of light skin having more privilege and value in society. Does this still exist today? In what ways have students, or their mothers and grandmothers, experienced this in their own families or in society? A selection from Maud Martha, by Gwendolyn Brooks, can be used to further illustrate how the issue of color is raised in another African American family. As in “Everyday Use,” the daughter with the lighter skin is more privileged than her darker-skinned sister. This issue is also addressed in “The Story of My Body,” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, which could be used as another supplemental reading. As a homework assignment, students will interview a member of their family about these issues.
Universal Theme: Maggie’s Value in the Family is Affirmed
At the end of the visit, Wangero decides that she must have the family quilts that had been promised to Maggie. Once again, she discusses her sister as if her sister as if she was not even present: “Maggie can’t even appreciate these quilts! She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use!”3 The conflicts in the story are brought to a climax when the mother responds, “I reckon she would. God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with nobody using them.”4 Even now, Maggie is ready to give them and accede to the wishes of her sister. But finally, the mother makes a decision that fully affirms Maggie’s worth. She does something she has “never done before,” when she “hugged Maggie...dragged her on into the room...and snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap.”5
For the first time in her life, Maggie is fully acknowledged; she is no longer invisible and her importance in the family is completely recognized by her mother. The theme of coming of ageor in the case of Maggiethe affirmation of her place and value in the family will be analyzed and discussed in the pre-writing stage of the writing process for the five-paragraph essay. Again, students will cite evidence from the story to frame the discussion and support their own ideas.