Lesson 4 Everyday Use For Your Grandmamma

1. Lesson 4Everyday UseFor Your Grandmamma By Alice Walker

2. About the author • Walker, Alice (1944- ), American author and poet, most of whose writing portrays the lives of poor, oppressed African American women in the early 1900s. • Born Alice Malsenior Walker in Georgia, she was educated at Spelman and Sarah Lawrence colleges. Walker's experiences during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence, including undergoing an abortion and making a trip to Africa, provided many of the book's themes, such as love, suicide, civil rights, and Africa. Walker received many additional honors and awards. She was also active in the movements for civil and women's rights.

3. Walker's other works • The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) • Meridian (1976) • The Color Purple (1982) • The Temple of My Familiar (1989) • Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) • By the Light of My Father's Smile (1998)

4. Text analysis • Words and expressions • Paraphrase some key sentences in the text • Translation • Figure of speech

5. Words and expressions • wavy: characteristic of waves, resembling waves. Here the word describes the marks in wavy patterns on the clay ground left by the broom. • an extended living room: an enlarged living room by a new addition to the original space. Extended means prolonged, continued; enlarged in influence, meaning, scope, etc. • e.g. extended care: nursing care provided for a limited time after a hospital stay • extended family: a group of relatives by blood, marriage or adoption, often including a nuclear family, living together, esp. three generations are involved.

6. overalls: loose-fitting trousers of some strong cotton-cloth, often with a part extending up over the chest, worn, usually over other clothes, to protect against dirt and wear. • sidle up: move up sideways, especially in a shy or stealthy manner.

7. Stand off: stand away, in a distance. • Augusta: city in eastern Georgia on the Savannah River. It is obvious that the family lives in the rural area in Georgia, a southern state in America. • dimwit: (slang) a stupid person, a simple • organdy (or organdie): a very sheer, crisp cotton fabric used for dresses, curtains, etc • to her graduation: to attend her graduation ceremony • pumps: low-cut shoes without straps or ties

8. church songs: hymns in praise or honor of God. • hook: to attack with the horns as by a bull. • shingle: a thin wedge-shaped piece of wood, slate, etc. laid with others in overlapping rows as a roof. • furtive: done or acting in a stealthy manner, as if to hinder observation; surreptitious , stealthy, sneaky • hang about: (or around) a. to cluster around; b. (colloquial) to loiter or linger around • washday: a day, often the same day every week, when the clothes, linens, etc. of a household are washed

9. tripped over it: mispronounced it, failed to say it correctly trip, to stumble, catch one’s foot and lose one’s balance. Here it is used figuratively, treating the name as something like a stone that causes one to stumble. • e.g. The fisherman tripped over a root and fell into the river.

10. stumped: (colloquial) puzzled, perplexed, baffled • member: (spoken English) = remember • a kind of dopey, hangdog look: • dopey: (colloquial) mentally slow or confused: stupid • hangdog: ashamed and cringing e.g. a hangdog expression • portion: one’s lot; destiny

11. Paraphrase some key sentences in the text She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand Paraphrase: She thinks that her sister has a firm control of her life. • She washed us in a river of make-believe • Paraphrase: • She imposed on us lots of falsity.

12. You can see me trying to move a second or two before I make it. • Paraphrase: You can see me trying to move my body a couple of seconds before I finally manage to push myself up.

13. Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War through the branches. • Paraphrase: As I see Dee is getting tired of this, I don't want to go on either. In fact, I could have traced it far back before the Civil War along the branches of the family tree.

14. Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head. • Paraphrase: Now and then he and Dee communicated through eye contact in a secretive way.

15. Less than that. • Paraphrase: If Maggie put the old quilts on the bed, they would be in rags less than five years. • This was the way she knew God to work. • Paraphrase: She knew this was God's arrangement.

16. Translation In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does hot show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep up with myquick and witty tongue.

17. 译文：在现实生活中，我是一个大块头、大骨架的妇女，有着干男人活儿的粗糙双手。冬天睡觉时我穿着绒布睡衣；白天身穿套头工作衫。我能像男人一样狠狠地宰猪并收拾干净。 我的一身脂肪使我在寒冬也保持温暖。我能整天在户外干活儿，敲碎冰块，取水洗衣。我能吃在明火上烧熟的猪肝，而这猪肝还冒着热气，从刚宰死的猪身上切下来的。有一年冬天，我用一把大铁锤砍倒一头公牛，锤子正打在小牛两眼之间的大脑上。天黑之前，我把牛肉挂起来凉着。不过，这一切当然都没有在电视上出现过。我的女儿希望我的样子是：体重减去一百磅，皮肤像下锅煎之前的大麦面饼那样细腻光滑，头发在炽热耀眼的灯光下闪闪发 亮。而且，我有一口伶牙俐齿，能够妙语连珠。就连乔尼·卡森也望尘莫及。

18. 1)一场大火把贫民区三百多座房子夷为平地。 • 2)咱们一边喝咖啡一边谈这件事吧。 • 3)只要我们坚持这些原则，我们就会成功。 • 4)他们的生活方式可以追溯到一千多年前他们的祖先所开创的古老传统。 • 5)这个消息使她大为震惊，但她很快就镇定了下来。

19. 译文： • 1) A big fire burned to the ground more than 300 homes in the slum neighborhood. • 2) Let's talk about the matter over a cup of coffee. • 3) As long as we stick to these principles, we will surely be successful. • 4) Their way of life could be traced to the ancient traditions handed down to them by their ancestors more than one thousand years ago. • 5) She was shocked at the news, but beforelong she recomposed herself.

20. Figure of Speech •  Hyperbole: •  Understatement: • Personification: • Metonymy: • Sarcasm: • Parallelism: • Metaphor:

21. Theme • The story addresses itself to the dilemma of African Americans who, in striving to escape prejudice and poverty, risk a terrible deracination,a sundering from all that has sustained and defined them. • Walker is saying that true art not only represents its culture, but is an inseparable part of that culture. The manner in which the quilts are treated shows Walker's view of how art should be treated • Alice Walker is using the quilts, and the fate of those quilts, to make the point that art can only have meaning if it remains connected to the culture it sprang from.

22. Structure Analysis Part 1 (1-2) General introduction Preparation made to receive Dee hinting the relationship between Mother and Dee is alienated; the relationship between the two sisters is unfriendly and tense. Part 2 (3-12) Description of Mother and two sisters (3 - 4) what Mother expected to be (5 - 6) what Mother actually was (7-12) Description of the two sisters Part 3 (13-16) More about Mother and Dee Part 4 (17-the last but one para) Dee’s visit (17-23) Dee and her boyfriend’s arrival (24-25) Dee’s new name (26-28) about Dee’s boyfriend (29- ) Dee wanted the everyday use Part 5 (the last para) Mother and Maggie felt relieved to see Dee leave

23. Thank you