In
"," we meet a mother and her two daughters. Mama still lives with Maggie in a small,
poor town. Her other daughter, Dee, has gone off to the university and has, at least to her own
mind, become more sophisticated and cultured. Dee changes her name to Wangero and has brought a
man named Asalamalakim home with her. Dee's name change and return home brings up questions of
culture: who "owns" it, and to what use it should be put.
Dee/Wangero returns home confident and self-assured. She explains that she has changed
her name as a statement about her freedom and control over her own identity, in the aftermath of
slavery. She was named after a grandmother, but Wangero asks her family, who the first
"Dee" was named by or after? Dee insists that she could trace the origins back to
before the Civil War, implying that slave owners named a slave ancestor Dee. Wangero does not
want to continue that history.
Meanwhile, Wangero also wants to take home
her grandmother's handmade quilts....
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