Utilisation Versus Enshrinement: Sibling Conflict over Heritage in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” from an Anthropological Perspective

Citation: EA Gamini Fonseka, "Utilisation Versus Enshrinement: Sibling Conflict over Heritage in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” from an Anthropological Perspective", Universal Library of Arts and Humanities, Volume 01, Issue 01.

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Through Mrs Johnson’s household, Alice Walker illustrates a microcosm of the Afro-American ethnic culture in the US. A victim of racial segregation and discrimination, Mrs Johnson remains a single parent with two daughters to look after, while living in a simple tin-roofed cottage located in a remote village. Despite her suffering from trauma caused by her previous house being burnt to ashes, she manages to play her role as a perseverant mother devoted to her two daughters, ancestors, religion, community, and above all her Afro-American ethnicity. The short story covers Mrs Johnson’s painful meeting with her younger daughter Dee after several years of absence from home, which spans over a couple of hours but enlightens her on what is happening to her Afro-American ethnic community in the process of sophistication achieved through the institutionalised form of education that Dee has already received. Dee’s repulsion against her new house which Mrs Johnson has qualms about, is ironically superimposed by her newly developed anthropological appreciation of the household goods of Afro-American ethnic character it shelters. Her passionate struggle to possess handmade items of ethnic value belonging to the house leads to a conflict between Dee and her sister Maggie who is backed by their mother Mrs Johnson. Her intervention in preserving the rights of Maggie appears to Dee as a retrogression in the current trends of ethnicity-inspired commodity culture. A headstrong outspoken woman by nature, Mrs Johnson reduces Dee’s condescending criticism to laughter and celebrates her victory over the new fashion-centric value system.

Keywords: Afro-American Ethnicity, Tradition, Modernity, Commodity Culture, Heritage, Sibling Conflicts, Motherhood Challenges, Americanisation

https://doi.org/10.70315/uloap.ulahu.2024.0101007