Alice Walker’s novel “In Love and Trouble” is a collection of short stories that shows the struggles of black women and their experiences with love. In this paper, I will summarize stories from the novel and reviews of those stories. The collection begins with the story of Roselily, an older black woman with four children who decides to marry a Muslim man in order to escape poverty in rural Mississippi . She is a single parent ready to trade in her old lifestyle for a new one in the Chicago, even though she does not know what all is to be expected after marriage.
Once the ceremony begins, she starts to feel uncertain about her husband, Chicago, and the life they will live there. The review shows that many women in Walker ‘s novels, like Roselily, have not placed themselves in their situations. In this story, Walker shows that even big changes such as marriage, religion, and Christian belief, were not changing the preconceptions of the role of women in this era. It suggests that Walker ‘s characters deal with these particular problems because of the society they live in. The next story in her collection is titled “Everyday Use”.
This story begins with an older black mother telling about her two daughters, while waiting for the eldest, Dee, to arrive home. She describes Dee as being smart, pretty, and feels that she is superior to others. Her younger sister, Maggie, was burned and bruised after the burning down of their old home. The ugly scars leave her feeling less than others, especially her well educated sister. When Dee grows older she Hartley 2 moves away to attend college and marries a Muslim man and practices their religious beliefs.
After changing her name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo”, she returns to her home asking her mother for a particular quilt that was given by her grandmother. Her mother refuses telling her that it is being saved for Maggie on her wedding day. Dee leaves angrily after insulting Maggie’s intelligence, telling her that has no use for the quilt. The review shows that this story expresses the important values of family and culture in the rural south. The rural south is slow with traditionalists trying to cope with extreme urbanism.
In addition, individualism and ambiguity are strong among the black educated elite. Many who leave traditional black culture are ashamed of it, but they still try to hold on to it by keeping cultural artifacts, antiques and souvenirs. The short story “The Welcome Table” is about an old poor black woman who is feared by the people in town because of her unusual and unknown appearance. One day, she walks a far distance to attend an all-white church but is quickly thrown out in the freezing cold after refusing to acknowledge anyone there.
As she walks she notices that Jesus has joined her side and happily continues, loosing interest in where they are going. They never hear of the old woman again and wonder if she walked herself to death. The review shows that the people in town fear her not just only because of her poor appearance but it also leads them to think that black people will soon be invading their church. It also shows how important religious beliefs and Christianity was to blacks.
Works Cited
Colton, Catherine A. , and Alice Walker. Chapter 4 Alice Walker’s Womanist Magic: The Conjure Woman as Rhetor. ” Critical Essays on Alice Walker. Ed. Dieke, Ikenna. Westport , CT : Greenwood Press, 1999. 33-43. Farrell, Susan. “Fight vs. Flight: A Re-Evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”. ” Studies in Short Fiction 35 (1998): 179-86 Musere, Jonathan. A Concise Review of “Everyday Use”: The Short Story by Alice Walker, Page 5 of 5 – Associated Content – associated content. com. associatedcontent. com. 2009. April 20, 2010
