We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(3) Base Camp
We can thank our narrator for making "Everyday Use" relatively easy, breezy reading. As an unpretentious sort, she's not out to impress us with a bunch of fifty-cent words; her language is direct and simple (which is not to say that a lot of what she tells us isn't thought-provoking, because it totally is). Of course, we do jump in and out of the narrator's head quite a bit in the beginning of the story. Those jumps can be a little jarring, but it's always pretty clear what's taking place in the narrator's head and what's happening in the story itself.