1a. What does the speaker dream?
2a. To what does the mother compare Maggie?
3a. What is Dee wearing? What greeting does she give? To what has she changed her name?
1b. What does the speaker's dream reveal about what she would like her life to be like? What does it reveal about the reality of her life?
2b. In what ways are Maggie and Dee different in both personality and appearance?
3b. What did Dee think of life with her mother and Maggie? For what reasons did she make changes in her life?
4a. What does "heritage" mean to Dee, Maggie, and the mother? Who has the deepest understanding of their heritage?
4b. How do you think Maggie will lead her life? Will she follow Dee's advice to make something of herself by leaving the family home? Provide evidence for your response.
5a. Who values the quilts more, Dee or Maggie? Why?
5b. If a quilt were made of your life so far, what scenes and symbols would it depict?
Point of View. What point of view is used in the story? What information do we learn from the narrator? What information is she unable to tell us? What might we know about Dee if the story were told by an omniscient narrator?
Plot. What are the inciting incident, climax, crisis, and resolution of the plot?
1. Imagine you are Dee. Write a name change greeting card to your family telling them about your new identity. In your greeting card, use an African expression from the story or another one you know.
2. Imagine you are Maggie. Write a wish list for your life, explaining why each wish is important to you.
3. Imagine you are the mother. Write a letter to Maggie explaining why you gave the quilts to her rather than to Dee.
Vocabulary
Participles. Participles are verbals, hybrid parts of speech in which verbs are transformed into adjectives by adding -ing (present tense) or -ed (past tense). Review verbals and participles in your Language Arts Survey 3.80 "Verbals: Participles, Gerunds, and Infinitives." Change each of the following vocabulary words into a present or past tense participle, and then use it in a sentence.
1. scald: participle
2. usher: participle
3. recompose: participle
4. rifle: participle
5. ream: participle
6. discard: participle
7. reflect: participle
8. lounge: participle
9. impress: participle
10. reject: participle
1. These are Maggie's quilts, Dee.
2. Maggie, we know Dee's motives.
3. I can use the antique quilts, Mother.
4. The quilting class is starting, everyone.
5. Lose some weight and become a television personality, Mother.
