Heritage In African American Culture

Almost all ethnicities preserve culture, heritage and or tradition that they cherish and pass down to the next generation. Heritage and tradition can be expressed in any form the ethnicity chooses to use. Some cultures use food as a way to express. For instance, in my Arabian culture, we like to cook mostly with grains. A popular grain dish is couscous. It consists of grains made from semolina. Just as food is a big part of culture and heritage, it is not limited solely to food. Most cultures use objects to symbolize what their culture represents. In African American culture, the arts, literature, agricultural skills, food, music, language, and clothing styles have been contributed and passed down to the descendants by the first generation
Walker from the get go, portrays Mama sticking to her cultural roots by the way the narrator describes Mama. "In Real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough man-working hands." (103) and from this quote, one can see Mama as a hard worker. This shows the link between her and the first generation African Americans that were put into slave labor. By Walker using the words "man-working hands" can be linked to hands of the slave workers in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. When working with wooden scythe, it was very common for calluses to develop on a workers hand. Being that Mama is portrayed to being a hands on worker, she stays true to her heritage when Walker describes Mama with those "man-working hands". Another way Mama is seen incorporating her heritage into her daily life is through work ethics. In the first paragraph of "Everyday Use" Mama is outdoors, sweeping clean her yard, which also served as the narrator mentions, an extended living room. It is clearly shown that Mama still applies her African American agricultural skills. When one thinks of agriculture, livestock is also inserted into the topic. When relating to African heritage, hunting has been a big part of ancient African heritage, even dating back to the tribal days. The narrator does a great job in connecting the ancient African heritage, to the present day with Mama. The narrator draws the link when she describes Mama being able to, "I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire in minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall." (103). the narrator is able to draw a clear image of Mama going back into her heritage. Mama makes a clear belief on what heritage is and means, when both Dee and Maggie, the daughters, want to keep the quilts. Mama