An Analysis of Dee’s Identity Construction from the Perspective of Consumer Culture

Abstract

This paper will focus on the role of the consumer culture in Dee’s identity construction in Everyday Use. Dee’s identification with the female image and her aestheticization of the reality and the history of African American reflect consumer culture acts as the “Other” in the Dee’s identity construction. However, consumption culture also serves as the domain where Dee establishes her self-identity as a black female in a white-dominant world. Through the exploration of the double role of consumer culture in Dee’s identity construction, this thesis advocates that in Every Use Walker presents the new black women dilemma in white-male consumer society and her thought on how to construct black female identities under the invasion of consumer culture into the American South, so that to some extent it makes certain contribution to the issue how women construct their own identity in the consumer society full of survival anxiety.