Importance of Quilts in Everyday Use by Alice Walker
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Everyday Use by Alice Walker
Everyday Use is a short story by Alice Walker, published in 1973. The story uses a quilt as a metaphor to represent the history of family and African American history. In addition, the quilt can be used to show how something unimportant and useless can be changed into something valuable to someone else. Quilt and the art of quilting play a significant in the African-American community. It presents the dignity of black women and is a symbol of family heritage. It was passed from one generation to another, and the specifics skills. Further, it is represented as a creative heritage; thus, quilting is an Everyday Use as represented by a walker. This paper will therefore discuss the importance of quilts in Everyday Use by analyzing their metaphoric and real-life use.
African-American quilts are work of art that tells the story of segregation and slavery and gives the admirers a story of hope and culture. Further, quilts represent the freedom, culture, and community heritage of the African-American community ( Parenti). Traditionally, quilts were used as a bonding tool, and each piece told a story of what individuals were going through. Quilting is associated with being feminine, but with time men joined the art. Joe Cunningham, a quilt maker, enjoys the art and describes it to be musical and poetic ( Craft In America). He notes that seating and working together as a group feels musical as everyone takes their time with the cloth, unlike machines. Further, he relates to the pattern and nature as he randomly picks fabric from his clothes and something unique. In one of his quilts, he represents landscapes and a cloud and describes the art as his favorite. Additionally, Joe enjoys freedom and rigidity as he can pick fabric by chance and makes a pattern that seems musical and artistic. For instance, he collected some fabric in Ghana and created a quilt that he named Patch Work Cloth. He just patched the materials together to make a quilt. Consequently, making a quilt by hand makes him complete and wealthy. He states that he can silently sow quilts for hours without distraction or getting bored. Emotionally, Joe feels wealthy and lucky he can make quilts.
Walker des...