The first clue in the story that Dee has strayed away from her heritage, when it is not trendy, is her appearance. Mama describes Dee as having on a dress "so loud it hurts my eyes." Mama goes on to talk about the yellows and oranges in the dress. Mama describes the jewelry Dee is wearing and how the "bracelets dangle and make noises." Dees hair is portrayed, as "black as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears." From earlier descriptions of Mama and Maggie, it is evident that Dee is not wearing clothes from her heritage. Mama talks of wearing "flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day." The day of Dee's arrival Maggie is dressed in a "pink shirt and a red blouse." Mama and Maggie's apparel is quite different from Dee's.

Dee also abandoned her heritage by not learning skills and trades passed down from one generation to the next. Mama talks about being able to "kill a hog as mercilessly as a man, and knocking a bull out and having the meat hung by night fall." This is no doubt a skill that was passed on to her at an early age from her parents. Maggie herself had learned to quilt from Grandma Dee and Big Dee. Quilting is a skill that Maggie learned from her ancestors that gave her a sense of her heritage and memories. Dee finds a quilt that Mama had offered her when she went away to college but Dee dismissed them as "old fashion and out of style." Now when Dee wants the quilts to "hang them," it is to be trendy. If Dee had been interested in the quilts for her heritage she would have wanted to get everyday use out of them, like Maggie, instead of putting them on display for everyone to see. The quilts would have been special, representing her heritage and not something to show off.

The real irony is despite the changes in her attire and name, the pictures of the yard and house, and her interest in the quilts, Dee neither knows nor values her real heritage. No matter how one views their heritage it is not t

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Approximate Word count = 812
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)