Edwin Reyes
EN 102 - C6A
Prof. Raquel Corona

Recitatif Response By Edwin Reyes

1. From the clues provided by the narrator, how do you figure out the race and class backgrounds of the two main characters, Twyla and Roberta? Why do you think Toni Morrison presents this in the way she does?

    In the literary work "Recitatif" by Toni Morrison, is presented to us the story of two girls who shared an experience of four months together at a orphanage at the age of eight (both). From the clues the author has given us, we can clearly conclude that there's racial inequality, as well as a class background difference. Although Twyla (the narrator) and Roberta were at the orphanage, they were not orphans. They were "abandoned." At orphanage, they would always get F's, Roberta because didn't pay attention and Twyla because would always forget what she read. During that time that they were living in, at that point of time likely around early 40's or so, there were lots of facts that categorized the class background of people. Back on time, my estimation is the 40's, not all the people knew how to read. And on most of the cases the non-reader was a black person. In the past,  the majority of readers were white people who had money and access to education. The narrator, through a passage of the story states that she knows how to read and Roberta doesn't. They'd fail their classes because Twyla "couldn't remember what she read," and Roberta because "couldn't read at all." But I find it hard to tell who's black and who's white. This is an information that the other kids from the orphanage knew because "they would sometimes tell them looked like salt and pepper," but that's something we don't specifically know. We only know that one of them was white and the other one black. When the mothers of Roberta and Twyla went to visit them at the orphanage, "Roberta's mom read the bible and brought food for her," but Twyla's mom didn't bring anything so they ate the mashed jelly beans off the easter gift Twyla had prepared. For me it's hard to tell who's black or who's white because I thought about it too much. I at first thought Twyla was white because she was able to read and Roberta wasn't. Then I thought Roberta was white because her mom had food and read the bible. Then I thought that Roberta was black because the narrator at one point of the story describes her hair as "big and wild" and that strongly sounds like the description of an afro. There's a lot of evidence that they're not the same color of skin, but I found not specific facts telling us who's black and who's white. I think Toni Morrison presents the story like that to us because she wants to allow our minds to decide who's black and who's white.