Instilled Heritage Essay - 1361 Words

Instilled Heritage Alice Walker usually puts herself into characters that she writes about in her stories. However, you don’t understand this unless you know about her. Staring with this let us find out about who she is and where she came from. When recounting the life of Alice Walker, you find out that she was born to sharecroppers in Eatonton, Georgia in 1944 and was the baby of eight children. She lost one of her eyes when her brother shot her with a BB gun by accident. She was valedictorian of her class in high school and with that and receiving a scholarship; she went to Spelman, a college for black women, in Atlanta. She then transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York and during her time there went Africa as an exchange†¦show more content†¦While Dee is gone Maggie and Mother are doing whatever needs to be done around the house, to survive. Dee would write every now and again, and told her Mother, no matter where she, the Mother, lived, she would always come and see her, bu t she wouldn’t bring any friends. Upon Dee’s visit, she arrives with a man that greets everyone, Asalamalakim, upon exiting the vehicle. Mother confuses this with his name and is very unsuccessful in trying to pronounce it. She is told to call him Hakim-a-Barber. Her daughter Dee also tells her mother that she has changed her name and it is now, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo. This name, Wangero, has a personal meaning to Alice Walker in the fact that while on her trip as an exchange student in Africa, the name Wangero is the name that was given to her while she was there. Moving to the trivial meaning of the short story, we later find Dee along with her mother, sister and Hakim, at the dinner table, having, none the less, pork. Hakim had stated that he did not eat pork and collards, yet Dee is more than happy to help herself to everything that is available. While sitting at dinner, she sees the churn that is in the corner and states that she wants to take the top home and make it a center piece as well as she wants the dasher as well, the wooden rod used to make butter. She can do something fancy with it as well. She continues after dinner going through the house searching through some old belongings,Show MoreRelatedUnderstanding Identity Asolitarist Approach1630 Words   |  7 Pagespeople within their community, and a collective or group identity which has been constructed around â€Å"high art† , considered to constitute a national heritage.’ Benedict Anderson describes modern nationalism as an imagined community, where although eac h person may not know one another in a nation-state, they share a common identity that is instilled through visual representations. 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