At first glance, the portrayal of Maggie is that she is unfortunate:.
Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks. (70) .
In this quote, Momma is claiming that Maggie is truly her daughter. In a way, Maggie is a lot like her mother; she appreciates hard work (unlike her older sister, Dee).
Momma's first-person point of view clearly shows how she feels about her two daughters and how different the two girls really are. Of course, she is their mother, so her perception of them is biased. But barriers have been formed between Dee and her mother, as evidenced in the way Momma compares her own education to Dee's; "I never had an education myself" (71). Dee's schooling seems to have distanced her from her mother and from Maggie:.
She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand. (71) .
Undeniably, a college education is bound to teach someone a new outlook on life, and Momma admits her own ignorance compared to Dee. There is much tension between Momma and Dee that only continues to build as the story progresses. Momma's relationship with Maggie, however, is valued much more than her relationship with Dee. .
When Dee returns home with Hakim-a-barber, she makes it clear that her name is now changed to "Wangero,"and she decides to distance herself from the family even more than before. She feels as though she is establishing a new heritage for herself, one that is held to a higher standard than her original values.