This story Recitatif truthfully intrigued me. It was an interesting story and the fact that she never revealed who is what made me want to read until i got the answer. I never got an answer from the author but based off of things said in the story I came to my own conclusion. The two main characters are Twyla and Roberta who are two different races but who is black and who is white. My belief is that Twyla is black and Roberta is white. I initially came to this conclusion but throughout the story the author writes in a way that made me second guess my choice but ultimately I stuck with the fact that Twyla is the black girl. I came to this conclusion based off of things that happened such as Roberta's mother refusing to shake Mary's hand. Also Roberta's reaction to Twyla at the diner reinforced my belief because if it was unsuitable to have friendly interactions between races it would generally be the white woman who would be stand offish. During their conversation Twyla said she lived in Newburgh which was later revealed to be the poor part of town, Roberta's reaction of " No kidding" and then laughed to herself and her male friends. This type shunning is what white people would usually do to blacks in that time making the but of a joke. When Twyla referenced the IBM people coming in and building up the town and then she wondered how Roberta winded up moving into a town of doctors and IBM people. These IBM people would be the white people who live in these expensive houses while the blacks live poor. There was a point where I was not so certain who was black and that was when Roberta and Twyla had their stand off Roberta said you kicked a black woman and you call me a bigot. That made me believe that Twyla was white woman kicking a black woman now she is here implying that she was hateful towards another race. But that questioning disappeared when Roberta recanted the story. That was the point that made me feel a hundred percent comfortable with my decision that Twyla was the black one in this story.
Professor I needed to complete my RR today because I have a large school load this week so I just wrote about something I found interesting
I feel like this was a great response. I had a similar train of through throughout the story.The only clue that confused me was the fact that Roberta could not read and write, yet Twyla could read, she just couldn't remember what she read.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your answer to the story.
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