Everyday Use

Among Alice Walker's earliest stories, "Everyday Use" still holds a central place in her body of work. Walker uses a patchwork quilt as a figure for the creative inheritance that African American people received from their mothers and female forebears. In doing so, she reshaped how readers think about art, the culture of women, and Black life. The story was among the first to place African American women's voices at its core, foreshadowing the concerns of a whole generation of Black women writers.

This casebook gathers the material a student or general reader needs to approach the story closely. It reprints the authoritative text of "Everyday Use" along with Walker's essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." It also offers an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Walker's life, an interview with the author, six critical essays, and a bibliography. The essays are by Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Thadious M. Davis, Margot Anne Kelley, John O'Brien, Elaine Showalter, and Mary Helen Washington.