“You just don’t understand your heritage.” (Walker, 1973) This line from Alice Walker’s 1944 short story “Everyday Use” pretty much sums up and perfectly depicts the conflict that arises between clashing of cultures and the factors that influences transformations of them. Culture, as Dr. Dennis O’Neil says, undergoes continuous change and “exists only in our minds” making it much easier to leave behind and get a new one. (2006) But just how much of our adopted and inherent culture can we lost? And how much change is enough?
The 2011 film “From Prada to Nada”, a Mexican-American film directed by Angel Garcia and written by Fina Torres, Luis Alfaro and Craig Fernandez, tells the story of two affluent Latina-by-blood sisters from East L.A., Nora and Mary, struggling to cope with the death of their father and the sudden change in their environment. The sisters face various obstacles to discover that they ultimately need each other, despite their differences, in order to adapt and learn their ancestral roots and survive their new environment.
In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use”, on the other hand, we are told of the reunion of a simple African-American family in a suburban community through the eyes of Mrs. Johnson, a mother to two very different daughters, Dee and Maggie. She shares with us the accounts of her Dee’s arrival after a long time of not being able to come home and the sudden change in her eldest daughter’s attitude towards their family and history.
The film and short story introduces us to two sets of sisters having been differently estranged from their ancestral heritage due to several factors. One of which is having strained family relationships either with each other or with their parents. Firstly, we see that the Dominguez sisters (“From Prada to Nada”) were not properly introduced to it from what is evident from their everyday life. They are more modernized and practice other things than the beliefs and traditions of their ancestors such as career (for Nora) or social and glamorous life (for Mary). Mary even noted herself as being an “American not Mexican”. The Johnson sisters (“Everyday Use”), on the other hand, were so blinded by their current states such as being impoverish (for Dee) and being unattractive (for Maggie), that the relationship between mother and daughter hardly ever got any depth. Mrs. Johnson despite acknowledging her daughter Maggie’s inaccuracies, such as her disposition or her style of walking, had failed to try to talk about them with Maggie. Meanwhile, she constantly looks up to Dee even if she chose to leave their home. In general, there is an evident lack of bond, though not explicit, occurring between members of the two families causing gradual rifts between them.
A dramatic change in the culture or surrounding they grew up with (or as they say, when real life happens) also caused them to lose part of their known culture. In the stories, this is shown by Nora and Mary suddenly losing everything they have including their old customs of life, and Dee eventually leaving her neighborhood and returning as a very different person. Both situations required the move from one culture (i.e. practices and, in the former’s case, language) to another and caused a bit of confusion to the characters involved. As a typical movie presentation, however, we see that Nora and Mary, in the end, adapted and loved their “new”, but actually original, culture, while Dee seemed have mixed hers with the culture she learned whilst exploring and being informed about “the outside world”, trying to get her mother and sister into it, too. These two different reactions to the change in culture allow us to view how diverse a man’s reaction to said transition can be. Again, as stated earlier, the loss either reforms them or greatly transforms who they are (or were) completely.
Very evident, as well, were the conflicting characters of the sisters and the moves each make in bridging them. Of the family Dominguez, Nora is the more sensible, responsible and practical person as evidenced by her dropping out from college and finding a temporary job as an intern in order to support her sister Mary’s college education. She also was able to easily adapt to their new home. The one weakness of Nora, however, is that she tends to be so career-driven that there is no balance between different aspects of her life, especially her social life. Mary, unlike Nora, is more carefree, sociable and also fashionable (i.e. adores designer clothes and shopping). Mary’s one weakness is coincidentally the opposite of her sister’s, in that she is easily affected by the pressure of her norms or society, making her desperate to find ways on how to get back to their former way of life.
Despite having a Mexican decent, the sisters learn they know little about their ancestry upon arrival at their new home, their aunt’s house in West L.A. Soon, however, with the help of their present guardians, who also became their second family, they began to discover and appreciate their culture.
Dee, in Walker’s short story, was described by her mother as effervescent, intellectual and the more beautiful of her daughters in terms of appearance. Dee, as her sister Maggie believes and her mother narrates, has “life always in the palm of one hand”. However, maybe owing to her wisdom as well, she dreams of someday breaking away from her neighborhood and the difficulties surrounding their way of living. Maggie, on the other hand, was a very timid and soft-spoken girl with an uncanny way of walking, very much the opposite of her sister. Her mother largely owes it to the fire accident years before that burned their home. However, Maggie contains more of her family heritage than she thinks, largely feeling that they just serve as her memory to remember them by.
The sisters are very much the opposite of the other. This means that essentially one sister’s personality perfectly complements the other like one’s cultural traits in conjunction with another, a harmonious or balanced union. Perhaps the authors of both try to tell us that in every family or even culture, each member has a positive trait that when used together creates harmony. This is seen in the case of Mary and Nora, eventually finding a way to help each other in their conflicts such as Nora having to lose the man she loves and Mary having to experience a near-death situation. The opposite of which, however, was depicted all throughout in Walker’s interpretation of this complement wherein Dee chose to leave his family and let the relationship between her and her family slowly wither.
In her story, Walker depicts two very different and completely opposite girls trying to make sense of their heritage through the one quilt that obtains both their attention. Eventually, it was given to the one their mother believes is most deserving of it, still without the realization from either parties as to why the other deserves it better. While there are conflicting parties on Walker’s story, Torres et al.’s screenplay, on the other hand, depicted harmony on the way heritage was realized and accepted by the sisters.
It may also be important to note that Walker, in her story, shows a perfect satire of differences in perception of the meaning of one’s culture with Dee’s homecoming in that she tries to acquire family heirlooms (e.g. turntable, quilt) she deemed to be essential in the preservation of their heritage, while her mother gives it to her sister to use someday because the latter believes it necessary for the passing on of their heritage. With her new perception, we can see that she has already lost who she originally was and the practices her family taught her. The satire of it comes from the knowledge that preserving a piece of family history is tantamount to admiring culture as opposed to giving importance to it through its use. From their situation, both do seem to have a point, who really is to say which side does value their culture?
Evidently, there stands one single unit that greatly influences all our knowledge and consideration of culture and history – family. It is through the ties we built with the people we grew up with and encounter every day that we know our people’s history and develop our own sense of culture. From the different psychological positions obtained from the stories, we can see that the moment we develop a sense of regard to our family and heritage is the same moment we exchange shame and naivety with pride and realize that even the wealthiest of men cannot buy the happiness one feels from the support and encouragement of a family and the satisfaction that comes from well-learned culture.
Comparing the stories allows us to see two sides of the same coin as we look at differing approaches to family relationships, culture and heritage. Again, we can’t always say that one side is correct and the other wrong. Maybe we are like Mary and Nora easily embracing a new, but actually original, heritage, or Dee easily swayed by other cultures and eager to revolutionize our own, or Maggie and “Mama” conservatively sticking to the practices taught to us by previous generations. Several factors affecting perceptions of culture, all of which essential to understanding a person’s stand. “All cultures change over time” (O’Neil, 2006). It is but a reader’s opinion to decide which to follow. Do we stick to the old or in with a new? And if we adapt a new one, do we keep the old? Or transform it to the new? As to my opinion, I’d rather be lost in my roots than completely lose my sight of it. With respect to heritage, change may be inevitable but one’s history is always a solid foundation of his/her character and purpose.
Bibliography
O’Neil, Dennis. Human Culture: What is Culture?. Palomar College, May 26 2006. Web. 23 October 2012.
Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. Weber State University Faculty, n.d. PDF file. 22 October 2012.
