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Heritage cannot be invented.
The notion of heritage is the primary source of the story’s central conflict, and in the end, Walker argues that heritage is something that must be experienced or practiced rather than invented. Mama’s refusal to give Dee the family quilts suggests that she can see through the inauthenticity of her daughter’s new identity and highlights the significance of the story’s title. Putting aspects of one’s culture to everyday use, Walker suggests, is the only way to meaningfully engage with personal history. Anything less is a mere display of heritage, and this superficial approach requires no real understanding of a particular way of life. Dee’s unwillingness to actively engage with the cultural symbols in Mama’s home makes it impossible for her to connect with her actual family roots.
The culturally aware identity that Dee attempts to create for herself relies purely on outward appearances, and no evidence exists to suggest that she wants to engage authentically with her true heritage. She wears an African-inspired outfit with natural hair and selects a foreign-sounding name, but given that she likely lacks personal experience with African customs, these choices end up further alienating her from her family’s history in rural America. In fact, Dee actively avoids embracing the traditions that Mama carries on by criticizing her way of life and seeing personal objects, like the quilts, as relics of a past time which are not relevant to her present life. This attitude reflects her desire to pick and choose what details make up her heritage, an approach which unsustainable and inauthentic.
Academic education is not equivalent to cultural education.
Despite the significant impact that going away to school had on Dee’s life, her interactions with Mama and superficial desire for the quilts reveal that she still has so much to learn about the world around her. Her academic education, Mama argues, made Dee self-absorbed and condescending more than anything else. The way she reads to her mother and sister serves as an example of the authority she feels as a result of her education, and she attempts to use this power to dictate all aspects of her life. In some ways, Dee’s formal education actually works against her by blinding her to the fact that people and cultures cannot be reduced to facts and figures. She may believe that her new, ideologically-inspired identity is authentic, but the way in which she treats Mama and the quilts reveals that she lacks a cultural education. She cannot comprehend that Mama and Maggie’s way of life is an honest reflection of who they are and an extension of their family’s rural background, nor can she understand that culture is a practice rather than an outward display. The fact that she confidently tells Mama that she does not understand what heritage means emphasizes that she is completely unaware of her own ignorance. For all of her academic education, Dee seems to know the least in this scenario.
Outward appearances are not always indicative of value.
Right from the beginning of the story, Walker introduces a preoccupation with the outward appearances of both people and objects and explores how these appearances relate to their inherent value. Mama, for example, explains that she knows Dee wants her to be “a hundred pounds lighter” with skin “like an uncooked barley pancake” instead of her true, tough self. This argument assumes that Dee’s idealized version of her mother has more value, but in reality, the commitment and love for her family that her hard-worked body reflects is far more meaningful. Mama and Maggie’s house follows a similar pattern, containing a deep history despite its simple appearance, while Dee’s visual display of her new heritage has the opposite effect. She wears African-inspired clothes and jewelry in order to show others that she feels connected to a particular culture, yet she has very little personal knowledge of Africa or African customs. In this case, Dee’s outward appearance works to cover up her superficiality by reflecting an identity that does not exist. The discrepancies that emerge throughout the story ultimately suggest that outward appearances can be misleading and have a tendency to distort the true significance of an identity or item. By continually referencing the physicality of the characters and the setting, Walker challenges the reader to push beyond a surface level understanding of the world and consider the layers of meaning that may not be apparent at first glance.
