Recitatif by Toni Morrison

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


At first, I was torn trying to figure out the races of both of these girls. It became a little game to see when it would be revealed. My first clue to figuring out each girl’s race was the introduction of their names. I immediately assumed that Twyla was the little black girl, and then Roberta stumped me. As far as my thought process went, Roberta wasn’t the name of a little white girl. I knew they were black and white because the narrator mentioned that they were these two little “salt and pepper” girls. The food situation at first seemed like a clue, but I chalked it up to Twyla’s mom being neglectful, and Roberta having a mom who was sick. It was funny that Twyla ate everything, Spam and jello with fruit cocktail, while Roberta didn’t even touch it. Another confounding clue was the fact that the narrator revealed that Roberta couldn’t read and write. This led me to thinking that maybe I had them all mixed up. The girls meeting in the Howard Johnson didn’t help me too much. The scene at the Food Emporium did help me a little though. The luxuries that Roberta had that Twyla seemed slightly jealous of made me believe that Roberta was white. My suspicions were confirmed toward the end, where Roberta was picketing against integration. A black mother would not have been against integration, the way that Roberta was. I think Toni Morrison sets up the story in this manner to show how our way of thinking, about skin color, amongst other things, change as we grow older. When the girls were younger, they played together happily. Yet as they grew older and drifted apart, race and wealth, and jealousy starts to emerge.