Everyday Use

“Everyday Use” is in some ways a deceptively simple story. The family drama it depicts is likely familiar to readers; the contrast Walker establishes between Dee and Maggie, and in particular Dee’s ingratitude towards the family that has sacrificed for her, is reminiscent of Biblical stories like the parable of the Prodigal Son. What Walker does in “Everyday Use” is use this basic plotline to explore issues related to art, education, and in particular, African-American identity and heritage.

Walker wrote “Everyday Use” in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Era and during a period when the Black Power movement was gaining traction. Like any broad-based social movement, Black Power did not espouse a single set of beliefs or goals. One common thread, however, was the notion that black Americans needed to cultivate a sense of racial and ethnic identity separate from the norms and values of Western culture. In many cases, this meant looking to traditional African cultures, and it is this idea that Walker examines through figures like Dee and Hakim-a-barber. Although Walker is sympathetic to the desire to recover a distinctly black cultural heritage, she suggests that, in practice, that desire can be elitist; as Walker depicts them, Dee and Hakim-a-barber represent a strand of black intellectualism that actually looks down on much of traditional African-American culture.

With its focus on black women, “Everyday Use” is also a challenge to the sexism that underwrote parts of the Black Power movement, as well as to the racism of some contemporaneous feminist movements. Although the term “intersectionality” did not exist in the 1970s, Walker’s writing often deals with the overlapping ways in which black women are oppressed, and “Everyday Use” is no exception; for instance, the idea that true art cannot be functional disqualifies much of the craftsmanship women (and especially women of color) have traditionally engaged in. This is an idea that Walker would expand on in her 1974 essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which argues that even in the most desperate of circumstances, black women have found outlets for their creativity in activities like quilting and gardening.