Race in Toni Morrison’s ”Recitatif”

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In the short story ”Recitatit” by the author Toni Morrison the protagonist are two girls called Twyla and Roberta. The story is told from a 1st person perspective and it is Twyla that is telling the story. “Recitatif” is told through a series of short scenes when the protagonist’s cross paths during different times in their lives. However one struggling issue for the reader through the text is that Morrison never gives away which race the girls belong to. Moreover Morrison is using different class codes to describe the race of the protagonists. In what follows I will discuss instances in the short story “Recitatif” and examine if Morrison avoids using race to define her characters. In the beginning of the story when the protagonists are kids they are both set in a shelter for different reasons. They meet with a woman called Big Bozo who works at the orphan she informs Twyla and Roberta that they will be roommates. Twyla says that “my mother won’t like you putting me here”. Then Twyla is talking about that her mother has told her “that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did. Smell funny, I mean,” the assumptions one might make from this is that Twyla’s mother have a racist view about the other race, however this tell very little about which race the protagonists has. On the other hand during the first meeting between the protagonist’s mothers, it is Roberta’s mother who acts in a racist’s way; instead of shaking Twyla’s mother’s hand she looks down at both Twyla and her mother then grabs Roberta and walks away. Furthermore Roberta’s mother are described as very religious and it could be for that reason Roberta’s mother acts the way she does, because Twyla’s mother are described as the opposite of religious. However if a person is religious or not are something one cannot know about another person from the first sight consequently the
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