Toni Morrison's "Recitatif" and the Significance of Ambiguous Racial Identity

It is insane how “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison was her only published short story ever written by her has only received limited attention, despite being the first African American Women to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Reading this story I believed that Morrison tried to break barriers not present them further. I believe that when she wrote this short story people knew very well that racism was alive but not identifying the race of either Twyla or Roberta was so that we cannot put them in our own box so to speak. It was intentional to show no class and no borders. The author did a great job in showing that when you are a child you do not see color. They were two different races but they were equal. The two characters had a very similar upbringing regardless of the color of their skin. The treatment and stereotyping towards a race group influence the reader perception of the events that concurred in “Recitatif” disregarding the characters race and knowing their social status of the main female characters have more importance. I chose to explore Morrison’s reasoning in why she chose not to reveal the skin color of the two females.

Humans are imperfect by a fault. Most of us try and live with no judgment. The truth is that we try to categorize. When we see, hear, taste, smell, or even read something we try identifying what that thing is. This is by default. I do not believe that we consciously categorize. I believe that this is to keep us from harm or danger instinctually. I believe that Morrison never gives the race of either Roberta or Twyla so we can see we instinctually try and categorize. Morrison succeeds in her ability to not give any identification of the main characters’ races in this story. Morrison makes comparisons of equality stating; “We were the only ones dumped and the only ones with F’s in three classes even gym” (Morrison 212). Using specific sources from the Literature Criticism Online databases provided to back up my reasoning I came across criticism essays that discuss “Recitatif” and notes that this short story not only explores racial and gender considerations but also probes the mythic significance of initiation themes as well as the analyzes of race and racism in her work.

David Goldstein-Shirley came up with a very impressing way to decipher the story’s importance, and how to discuss four principal tactics that are used to make the reader has more of a connection to what they are reading this is done by (1) bracketing that is, setting aside gender in the text; (2) “stating” within the text the “real world” debate about school desegregation and mandatory busing; (3) modeling a particularly African American storytelling style; and (4) using cleverly ambiguous racial codes in its descriptions of the main characters. I will then describe, as evidence of the success of these textual tactics, the responses of some readers to them.” Morrison did not tell the readers which race each girl was to challenge the readers’ view on races and make them wonder who's being discriminated against. I believe she wanted the readers to really consider the stereotypes given to each race and see if they can figure out each girl’s race based on the information given. I also feel that she refused to reveal the races because it wasn't as important as the inner message of the short story. This critical detail that Morrison left out should be unimportant which is why it is believed to be so important that is why it was purposefully hidden. “Morrison’s reading of race begins with the problems of naming race, the ambiguities, and silences in national and racial discourse where language struggles to fully name identity. This is also the point at which I wish to start, by beginning with the notion of race as an identity that is represented rather than naturally embodied, to investigate the strategies by which “race” is at once constructed and rendered ambiguous in racial discourse and the implications of racially ambiguous identity for our notions of “race” as a useful term for discussion”.

In an essay by Kathryn Nicol, she analyzes the construction of racial identity, something that is socially constructed with race being considered a modern concept. In this story, Morrison perfectly managed to portray racial tension between Roberta and Twyla without actually revealing whichever one of them was white and which was black. I think she specifically wrote "Recitatif" without leaking which character was which race was to show how both black people and white people can be discouraged from interacting with others from an unusual race on a version of broader strains around them. The author doesn’t mention race because it isn't important. She wanted to stress this as much as possible, and this is a great way of doing it. Although we can infer who is who, the only way we could do this is to use unfair stereotypes for each of the races. The races of Roberta and Twyla aren’t specifically mentioned, so the reader has to use their own opinions to only think who is who, but in the end, it doesn't matter. The message that Morrison is attempting to send “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial” “Black readers seem to place the characters’ race according to economics: Twyla is lower middle class and Roberta is wealthy by the late 1970s; therefore, Roberta is the white character. But Morrison makes Roberta wealthy and Black to overturn out class assumption. Before obvious class divisions appear, Morrison, using cues that are not color-coded, nevertheless plays on our stereotypes as well as our knowledge of recent American history and culture” (Rayson). She wanted to teach the readers to become less bias and judgmental of others who are of different race. In doing this, Morrison believed the readers would learn to base values on people individually without looking at the color of their skin.

In an analytical essay by Terry Otten, he discusses a connection between “Recitatif” and Morrison’s novels. “Like Morrison’s other work, the story challenges the reductive binary oppositions that have dominated Western, or what is sometimes more particularly called “Euroamerican,” culture, by subtly exposing and deconstructing the racial assumptions of the reader”. Otten brings up how Morrison is writing about real issues that are occurring in a universal matter. Which is why her short story was highly awarded and relatable to her readers. With Morrison using such a vague technique of expressing these characters racial differences this keeps the reader intrigued to try and decipher whatever race they think the characters are.

Conclusion

References

1. Morrison, T. (1983). Recitatif. In R. B. Stepto (Ed.), The Norton anthology of African American literature (pp. 2519-2535). W.W. Norton & Company.
2. Bell, B. E. (2008). "We didn't find out till later that she was white": Memory, race, and narrative in Toni Morrison's "Recitatif". College Literature, 35(2), 89-106.
3. Kent, G. (2003). Racial dynamics, traumatic memory, and Toni Morrison's "Recitatif". Studies in American Fiction, 31(1), 33-49.
4. Hathcock, J. A. (2008). Who's white? Passing and/as subjectivity in Toni Morrison's "Recitatif". African American Review, 42(3/4), 435-448.
5. Lim, S. K. (2011). Toni Morrison's "Recitatif": Telling a slave story from a "post-racial" perspective. Journal of Modern Literature, 34(1), 65-83.