Analyze "Everyday Use" from a postcolonial point of view.

One angle that you can use to examine this story that is
so important from a postcolonial perspective is the whole issue of identity. It is clear
that Dee, in trying to understand herself, her heritage and her identity, has ironically
rejected the identity of her immediate past by trying to pass herself off as African and
changing her name and her way of dressing herself. However, it is clear from the way
that she treats Mama's things that she now does not appreciate the immediate past of her
ancestors in America by being so desperate to return to her African identity. To Mama,
such objects as the quilts and the churn top and dasher are fundamental parts of her
history. To Dee, they are just objects of artistic beauty to be shown
off:

"I can
use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table," she said, sliding a plate over
the churn, "and I'll think of something artistic to do with the
dasher."

To Mama, things are
all about their practical usage and the way that they had been used everyday by her
family. Note what she thinks of when she looks at these
items:

You
didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make
butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks;
you could see where thumbs and fingers and sunk into the wood. It was beautiful
light-yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had
lived.

To Mama, every bump on
the churn and dasher reminds her of somebody's hand, and the wood itself reminds her of
a particular tree. This object is valued precisely because of the way her family have
used it over the years. The irony is that when Dee says to Mama and Maggie that they "do
not understand their heritage," she is blind to the fact that her attempt to embrace her
African distant past has meant that it is she who does not understand her heritage and
culture: a key postcolonial theme.