Question

identify and analyze two strategies Wangero uses to try to persuade her mother that she , and not her sister Maggie should own the Quilts . explain why wengero ultimately fails at persuading her mother to give her the quilts and what larger message ot themse Walker is trying to convey. The ecxcerp is "everyday use" by Alice walker.

Answer 1

Brief answer: Dee (who renames herself Wangero) tries to claim the quilts by (1) framing them as rare cultural artifacts only someone with her education and “new” identity can appreciate and therefore must preserve, and (2) using a performative rejection of her given identity (name change, dress, tone) to assert moral superiority and entitlement. She fails because Mama recognizes Dee’s appreciation as superficial and disrespectful of how the family actually lives with its history; Mama promised the quilts to Maggie, who will use them and thus keep the family traditions alive. Walker’s larger message contrasts living, everyday heritage with showy, museum-like claims on the past, criticizing aestheticized or performative appropriation of culture and defending rooted, practical continuity of tradition.

Expanded analysis

1) Strategy — Intellectualizing and aestheticizing the quilts
- What Dee does: She treats the quilts as objects of cultural value to be preserved and displayed rather than used. She speaks about their provenance and roots in the family’s past as if naming those facts makes her the proper custodian.
- Why she thinks it will persuade: By presenting herself as the more educated, cosmopolitan daughter who understands “heritage,” she implies that Maggie and Mama are insufficiently sophisticated to value or preserve the quilts.
- Why it fails: Mama sees that Dee’s “appreciation” would turn the quilts into museum pieces — disconnected from the family’s practice and memory. For Mama, the quilts’ meaning lies in everyday use and in the hands that made and will continue to use them (Maggie’s), not in being displayed as tokens.

2) Strategy — Performative identity and moral entitlement
- What Dee does: She has changed her name and adopted a new style and rhetoric that signal a claimed return to African roots. She talks and acts with a superior, didactic tone toward Mama and Maggie, implying she alone has the right to reinterpret family history.
- Why she thinks it will persuade: The name change and theatrical self-reinvention are meant to confer authority and authenticity; Dee expects that refusing her claim will look like ignorance or betrayal of their supposed cultural heritage.
- Why it fails: Mama rejects the performance. She recognizes Dee’s gestures as surface-level and resents the condescension. The promise made earlier to Maggie and the emotional, practical bond Maggie has with the quilts outweigh Dee’s showy claims.

Why Dee ultimately fails
- The narrator (Mama) values lived tradition over symbolic possession and remembers promising the quilts to Maggie. Mama also sees through Dee’s posture: Dee wants the quilts as objects to exhibit, not as items to continue the family’s everyday practices. By giving the quilts to Maggie, Mama affirms continuity, authenticity, and a form of respect for the makers and users of those quilts rather than for someone who would appropriate them for display.

Larger message by Alice Walker
- Walker contrasts two conceptions of heritage: a lived, functional, intergenerational tradition (embodied by Mama and Maggie) versus a modern, often aestheticized, and sometimes appropriative idea of heritage (embodied by Dee/Wangero). The story critiques the reduction of cultural objects to status symbols and defends the dignity and truth of ordinary people who live their heritage rather than perform it. Walker suggests that real heritage is practiced and passed down, not merely claimed or exhibited.