Every Day Use & I Stand Here Ironing

Every Day Use By Alice Walker
This short story brought a sense of local color, with the customs that the mother, protagonist, told us about in her life. Living in a rural area, living like people did in the old (butchering your own livestock) days, and not being formally educated. When I reread the story I felt like there was a motif of the hurt feeling between all of the characters. When the mother is thinking of Dee or Wangero, the antagonist, and how she always wanted something better, it felt like that sort of hurt her. Maggie, the daughter was hurt by a fire physically and mentally, she was always timid and not wanting to be upfront about anything. Wangero or Dee, was hurt when she abruptly was told that she could not have the quilts and churn top.

I liked this story, I have read parts of it before. I think it was unfortunate that there was fire and that they have a poor quality of living even though they seem to like it. The mother, I feel, was right for not letting Dee take the quilts, she was never there, and really did not have a connection with the family other than being a daughter. The characters are very diverse which was interesting when reading. I could really relate to the mother hoping Maggie put everyday use to the heirlooms, and Dee wanting to treasure it with out use. My grandmother has many objects from the farm she lived on that now sit in her basement, she tells about different things and treasures them in use or not.

I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen
The mother and the narrator of this story took me through her life revolving around Emily, her first daughter. Conflicts dotted around the plot. Allusions to the Great Depression were many in number and hidden in the texts, having a tough time finding jobs and overall poor quality of life for the single mother. The entire story was a flashback to the mothers first occurances with Emily and as the young girl grew up, the story came back to the present only at the very beginning, around the middle, and at the end.

This story was interesting, but kind of depressing in a way. The characters obviously had a rough life, especially Emily's. I can't imagine growing up in the Great Depression. Even though i know that I live in a bad recession, I still see food in my kitchen, and have a kitchen and a house, so I know I'm lucky. The other thing I can't fathom is sending my child away because they couldn't learn things as fast as the other kids, or having to give my child up for a few years. It seems impossible.