Opera of Power: Recitatif by Toni Morrison

The haunting arioso pulses of the memories in “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison recount the intersections of the lives of two women of different race. Twyla, the story’s narrator, and Roberta, a girl of the opposite race, are dumped at St. Bonaventure, a state home, by their mothers. Tossed and held together by the bond of abandonment, the girls form a friendship that carries them through their allotted time at St. Bonny’s. One day, the girls witness Maggie, the mute kitchen worker, fall in the apple orchard, as the older girls in the state home scorn Maggie. Dissonance arises in their separate memories of the event because Roberta remembers that the vicious older girls pushed Maggie down, although Twyla remembers just that Maggie fell and the older girls mock her. The details of Maggie’s fall cause tension between Twyla and Roberta later because how each recalls this incident typifies their attitude towards their past. Unlike future interactions, this episode on the surface is seemingly unrelated to race; however, each subsequent meeting between Twyla and Roberta is characterized by race and economic status. Roberta and Twyla meet a total of five times with each presenting a conflict. The first meeting, when Maggie falls, introduces the distinction in the orchard’s hierarchy. The second meeting, where Roberta is unhappy that Twyla approaches her presents the difference between races. The third meeting, when the women, now grown with families of their own, run into each other at an upscale grocery, exposes the disparity between economic positions of the women. The fourth meeting at a protest of a school’s integration uncovers the variance in the women’s worldviews. The fifth meeting brings about the reconcilia...

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...haracters. The spotlight on the disassociated memories brings up a broader focus on the human desire to dominate.

Works Cited

Androne, Helane Adams. "Revised Memories and Colliding Identities: Absence and Presence in Morrison's 'Recitatif' and Viramontes's 'Tears on My Pillow.'." MELUS 32.2 (Summer 2007): 133-150. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 126. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Nov. 2013
Ashford , Tomeiko R. "Transfiguring Aesthetics: Conflation, Identity Denial, and Transference in 'Passing Texts' of Black Narrative.” Review of Black Political Economy 126 (2005): 89-103. Web. 3 Nov. 2013
Hardy, Sarah Madsen. "What Happened to Maggie.” Short Stories for Students 5 (1999): 249- 252. Print.
Morrison, Toni. “Recitatif.” Elements of literature, 5th Course. Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2007. 154-160.