Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Recitatif
For our next blog post, I'd like you to reflect on why you think Toni Morrison chooses to keep the races of the two girls in "Recitatif" ambiguous. What does this do to the reader? I'd also like you to talk about the significance of the friendship trope. What is their friendship a metaphor of, and why is it important?
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The decision for Morrison to leave the race of the girls unsaid challenges how we view the lives of blacks and whites during this time period. When I read the description of the story I thought to myself that especially during this time period how can you not tell the difference between black and white? As I asked this question I realized the one and only different of black and white that many of us chose to ignore, color. The color of one's skin vs. the color of another. At the beginning of the story it's harder to decipher who is black and who is white because it doesn't matter. Society likes to tell us that the color of our skin controls our destinies. In the small community of the shelter color doesn't matter, whether Maggie is black or white isn't mentioned until the end of the story. By the end of the story it's obvious that color has played an important role in Twyla and Roberta's friendship. Although the girls spend more time apart than together, their bond can represent the setting of each time period. For example, during their first meeting outside of the shelter Roberta gives Twyla a cold shoulder. Roberta later explains that the times were tense between blacks and whites but Twyla remains confused about the encounter. Twyla disagrees and believes whites and blacks were getting along well during this time. The difference between the girls' attitudes during the scene at Howard Johnson is significant because it's the first time race matters to the girls themselves. According Roberta, she disregards Twyla because "Black, white. You know how everything was." Another difference between Twyla and Roberta is how they respond to the integration of their children's' schools. At this point Twyla questions if Roberta is a bigot, she wonders if race matters to this woman she calls friend. The girls' friendship makes the reader question the possibility of a relationship between a black woman and a white woman. In the shelter it didn't matter that there were children of different races together in one institution. Why does it matter later?
ReplyDeleteIn Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, we are given multiple perspectives from the characters, Roberta and Twyla during the events of their childhood to becoming adults. What we can gather from their shared thoughts is the fact that not all of the events that are present in the story, don’t match up with what the characters themselves remember. Due to the personal outlooks and their time apart from one another, it questions their whole relationship as friends, whether or not they know each other on a more personal level. From the beginning, we only get a small glimpse into their shared past when they were together at what appears to be an orphanage. From their interactions and conversations, they appeared to be close, but it feels like they were more like acquaintances than friends. “We didn’t like each other all that much at first, but nobody else wanted to play with us because we weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were dumped.” (Morrison) This phase basically summarizes their friendship as being build, out of loneliness and the need for a companion, making more difficult to see them as friends. Yet when they drifted apart, they were still able to recognize each other, even though both of them undergo major changes in their lives. Even when they were together as kids, they shared some of the same memories and events, but they created to different scenarios of what actually happened. The author purposefully left out any physical descriptions of their appearances so we are judging them on their conversation and friendship, rather than their appearances.
ReplyDeleteThe races of the two girls are intentionally left ambiguous for perhaps a multitude of reasonings: (1) Morrison realizes that the reader often paints a picture of the characters they read about in their heads-- what picture was painted about Twyla and Roberto to the reader, and for what reasons? and (2) Morrison, perhaps not wanted to make this a text blatantly centered around race relations between children, does indeed make this into a text blatantly centered around the race relations of the reader, leaving it up to the reader to use their own judgments to "assign" races to the characters. Readers in general have a tendency to necessitate the painting of a character's pictures in their heads-- however, Morrison provides us with aspects of her characters' personalities in lieu of explicitly saying their race.
ReplyDeleteIt also shows that, (without the influence of the racist tendencies of parents,) that children are blind to race and generally only treat other races negatively if incline to by their parents' behavior. As these children are orphaned or abandoned, they have no influence like that in their life. Twyla and Roberta become friends as a result of their circumstances in being two children that weren't orphaned but rather abandoned, with race being entirely regardless.
Keeping their races unknown to the reader makes it hard for the reader to attribute what actions of the characters (and their mothers and friends) are motivated by racism and/or prejudice and what isn't. I also think keeping their races ambiguous makes it harder for the reader to make decisions on who is right and who is wrong in this friendship. It keeps the characters in a weird gray area, where it makes harder to the reader to be certain on who is the good friend and who is the bad friend. It keeps true to life, where no one is purely good or purely bad.
ReplyDeleteI think their friendship becomes a litmus test for the effect of racism. When they both enter the shelter, they've gotten a little taste of what the world thinks of race. But they are both innocent enough that they quickly are able to forget what they've heard and can embrace their friendship. They get small instances of it - like when their mothers visit, but they mostly live within their own world and can brush these event off. When they both leave the shelter and experience the world and all its ideas of race, their reunions are tainted with the racism and prejudice that has seeped into their thoughts. They are no longer able to get back to that friendship (mostly) free of racism because they no longer have that innocence. They've crossed the point of no return where they can't interact without the ideas of race the world has embedded in them, which causes much tension in their relationship.
Morrison might have chosen to leave the girls' race ambiguous so as not to subjugate them to stereotypes. Instead of just assigning behaviors based on race, we are forced to really question what constitutes blackness or whiteness. It goes to question the race identifying guidelines that we are inculcated with from pretty much birth. As the story progresses it becomes harder and harder to identify who belongs to which race. I think the ambiguity actually shows that the problem with race is not the fact it exists or is constructed. Rather the problem is the internal discourses we automatically apply to those whom we view as "other". These are what we use to construct race. Interestingly, the discourses are the same although applied to different races. The racial ambiguity starts a new conversation on race.
ReplyDeleteTheir ambiguity also contributes to their friendship representing the mind's adapting to racial identity and relations. The concept of race is something introduced to us. From then on we struggle to accept it and it's constraints. In the girls' friendship we see the initial ambivalence to race followed by their coming to understand how it divides and directs. Not knowing who is what race, we see that the struggle to understand and live according to something constructed is universal in application.
Morrison might have chosen to leave the girls' race ambiguous so as not to subjugate them to stereotypes. Instead of just assigning behaviors based on race, we are forced to really question what constitutes blackness or whiteness. It goes to question the race identifying guidelines that we are inculcated with from pretty much birth. As the story progresses it becomes harder and harder to identify who belongs to which race. I think the ambiguity actually shows that the problem with race is not the fact it exists or is constructed. Rather the problem is the internal discourses we automatically apply to those whom we view as "other". These are what we use to construct race. Interestingly, the discourses are the same although applied to different races. The racial ambiguity starts a new conversation on race.
ReplyDeleteTheir ambiguity also contributes to their friendship representing the mind's adapting to racial identity and relations. The concept of race is something introduced to us. From then on we struggle to accept it and it's constraints. In the girls' friendship we see the initial ambivalence to race followed by their coming to understand how it divides and directs. Not knowing who is what race, we see that the struggle to understand and live according to something constructed is universal in application.
Toni Morrison’s choice to keep the races of the two girls, Roberta and Twyla, in “Recitatif” ambiguous to display the fact that even without knowing the race, human beings still have the tendency of categorizing each other. This allows the reader to read without judgement of who is black or who is white, therefore whatever dialogue there is between the two girls or actions either of them does, does not get categorized by their color. However, while reading, some readers will still try to categorize which character is white or black based on their actions leading back to what Morrison is trying to display in her writing; we automatically try to categorize even without knowing race. Morrison in way wants to let the reader read freely and see that there are blurred lines between the two, it doesn’t matter what color they are, they still go through similar events. Since “Recitatif” was published in 1983 after the African American Civil Rights Movement had taken into affect, illegalized discrimination, led to many changes in the American society, giving a type of freedom to the African Americans from the racial chains they had encountered. It isn’t difficult for Roberta and Twyla to be friends while being in the orphanage since there are kids and create a friendship based on their mothers being sick, even when other kids call them “salt and pepper.” However, as they get older, the racial differences shape their relationship. It becomes difficult for them to overcome these differences and as the reader we can see how their racial differences affect their views and behaviors. Maggie is described as the parenthesis in the story making her the silent truth in the American society based on its racial history while Roberta and Twyla are the representation of the racial binaries delimiting it. Their friendship is a metaphor for society. Their racial differences makes them remember their experience of Maggie differently based on their color and emotional state. When Roberta and Twyla see each other again during picketing, Roberta accuses Twyla of having kicked Maggie who was black when she had fallen. Twyla seems confused by this stating that Maggie wasn’t black and she hadn’t kicked her. This is important to note because it portrays how based on the color they are, they result in interpreting things differently. This further displays how their friendship is a metaphor for the society that they live in because Morrison captures what each girl remembers, how they remember, and what they forgot about their memory of Maggie's fall, displaying America’s racial differences that existed and how it affected Roberta and Twyla's memories.
ReplyDeleteMorrison's decision to keep the races of the two girls ambiguous allows you, the reader, to be openminded about the roles of the two characters and eliminate the stereotypes of what it is to be white or what it is to be black. When you are aware of the race of the character you subconsciously find yourself placing certain characteristics and actions of the character based on race and justifying those things because of their race. The downside to the ambiguity is that you find yourself dwelling on the race and who is white versus who is black throughout the entire story. It becomes harder to differentiate the race the more you read because it can go both ways. The ambiguity also allows you to see these girls struggles and understand them individually in order to show that it doesn't matter what race you are, everyone of any race can have similar struggles (i.e. both living in poverty as young girls, having mommy issues, orphans). The main reason I think she left race ambiguous is to allow the reader to form and reform their opinion on race and really make you think.
ReplyDeleteI think the relationship of these two girls is a metaphor for society of that time period. For example, within the first few paragraphs in the story, we see Twyla saying things that are usually taken as racist statements. She mentions that when she is introduced to Roberta that she became “sick to my stomach”. Then later in life at the diner when Roberta dismisses Twyla, then, when she sees her years later states it was due to the divide of race at that time which is why she dismissed her. These examples demonstrate the divide of race in society within a timeline of years, from childhood to adulthood, through these two girls but it really demonstrates the divide of race in society as a whole.