The title
"" is a referent not only to the quilts, but also to one's culture, which in this case
is reflected by gender, race, geography, language, values, and vocation.
Mrs.
Johnson sees the quilts as constructs of an African-American, matriarchal, agrarian,
self-sufficient Southern culture. More specifically, she wants to put the quilts and her
culture, race, and language to everyday use to honor the older matriarchs from her family,
namely Grandma Dee (who lived during slavery).
If her daughter Dee/Wangero is
ashamed to put this extant culture to everyday use, then she dishonors those slaves and the
daughters of those slaves during the Jim Crow South. If Dee/Wangero takes her pre-feminist,
pre-Civil Rights, agrarian culture for granted and fails to use it every day, then she will be
passed over by Mama as the future matriarch of the family. Instead, the honor goes to Maggie
who practices the culture daily in her domestic duties and staggered speech.
The story is very much a kind of revisionist Cinderella myth retelling with the
domestic servant (Cinderella, or Maggie) being rewarded with the slipper (or quilts), but
instead of marriage to a Prince and becoming queen, Maggie becomes the next matriarch (Mama, and
then Grandma Dee).
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