Author Alice Walker is an African American woman who grew up in the rural south during segregation, as is the narrator in "Everyday Use", Ms. Johnson. Walker feels that one's name should be revered for its symbol of ancestry, as she did when she took back her maiden name to honor her great-great-great-grandmother. In Walker's "Everyday Use," she uses a symbolic quilt to express the differences of understanding one's heritage within a single family.

The precise setting of "Everyday Use" is not given but it can be assumed that the geographical setting is in a southern countryside likely to be in Georgia. The physical setting, a three-bedroom shack with a tin roof and irregular holes cut in the walls for windows, is in a pasture with cows roaming all around (356-57). The large yard is described as an "extended living room" because it is more comfortable than being...