The Return of Dee

1174). Mama also admits that Maggie is mute and "knows she is not bright," for "like good looks and money, quickness passed her by," (Walker, p. 1175). Dee, in contrast, has e'er gotten what she wants, and Dee has always "wanted nice social occasions" that the family's lack of education and penury could not provide, (Walker, p. 1175). When their house burns down and Dee livems delighted to run into the house "she had hated" turn to ashes, Maggie is scarred in the fire, (Walker, p. 1174). However, the scars that take out Maggie feel insecure in Dee's presence run much deeper and atomic number 18 more of a psychological nature.

When Dee arrives, we see she has through with(p) everything she bum do distance herself from her impoverished childhood still in doing so she has also distanced herself from her develop and sister and her heritage. She has changed her hair, her style of dress, her manner of speaking, and considered herself educated, hip, and cosmopolitan in comparison to her mother and sister. When Dee be go fars disjointed at the end of the flooring that she cannot have the quilts destined for Maggie, because, for once, her mother denied her something "nice" she wanted, Dee explains to Maggie: "It's really a new day for us. that from the way you and Mama still live, you'd never know it," (Walker, p. 1180). In other words, Dee is ashamed of her past and even her heritage, though she desires the quilts because of their mulct craftsmanship that she knows will impress others. This is me

We see that Dee is ashamed of her heritage and only desires the quilts in battle array to display delightful craftsmanship in her home that she can use to impress others of her "worth." We see this when Mama asks her what she will do with them and she replies, "Hang them," (Walker, p. 1179). Then Mama tells us, "As if that's the only thing you could do with quilts," (Walker, p. 1179). Moments later, when Maggie acquiesces to her sister's demands for the quilts, she tells Mama, "I can ?member nan Dee without the quilts," (Walker, p. 1179). In this we see the bond of sisterhood between Mama and Maggie and we see Maggie's recognition that the quilts are more than just a fine piece of craftsmanship; they are symbolic of her heritage and cultural history.

Even though she is slow, scarred, skinny, and awkward, Maggie can quilt like her namesake Grandma Dee. It is Mama, who has long perceived Dee as superior to Maggie, who must come to the recognition of this power and connection in Maggie. As Gruesser (p. 183) writes of this present moment of awareness that hits Mama when she denies Dee and embraces Maggie: "It is at this moment in the story that Mama has her epiphany, realizing that her thin, scarred, pathetic daughter, who knows how to quilt and serves as her family's oral historian, deserves the quilts more than her shapely, favored, educated daughter, Dee, who only wants the quilts because they are now fashionable."

We see that the quilts are something more than "fashionable" to Mama and Maggie. For within the quilts is the history of their family and its strtggles and triumphs. there are pieces of dresses worn by Granma Dee more than "fifty geezerhood ago," pieces of gramps Jarrell's "paisley shirts," and even a piece from Great Grandpa Ezra's "uniform that he wore in the Civil War," (Walker, p. 1177). While the participation of African Americans in the Civil War was seldom acknowledge by whites or in history books, Grandma Dee's quilts are testament to such experience
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