The Recitatif Themes

In the story “Recitatif” author Toni Morrison, published in 1983, tells a story of two young girls, Twyla and Roberta, with two different ethnicities, who grow up in an orphanage together. Due to the fact that the story is narrated by Twyla, it seems natural for us the readers to associate with this touching story, as many of us have encounter racial discrimination back in the 1980s, making it clear that Morrison states the two girls grow up to always remember each based on the similarities and the childhood they both encounter together, come from different ethnic backgrounds, and as the story reveals, destiny is determined to bring the girls’ path together.
The story begins with both girls being dropped off when they were both eight years old in the orphanage, St. Bonny’s. Having the similarity of not being real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky the girls instead were dumped because their mothers didn’t want them. Twyla’s mother was not fully capable to take care of Twyla or as she states in the story her mother “danced all night.” As for Roberta’s mom, she was always sick. In the orphanage the girls become roommates and grow a bond because no one else wanted to play with them, the girls did not lack of having adventures together. For example, Twyla and Roberta enjoyed spying on the “big girls”, on the 2nd floor who pushed them around, who wore lipstick and penciled their eyebrows and liked to smoke and danced. Besides the girls spying on the “big girls”, they would also get a good laugh at laughing at Maggie, a deaf woman who would clean and cook in the orphanage, who couldn’t defend herself. While in St. Bonny’s, Twyla and Roberta witness Maggie get tripped and kicked by the older girls on the 2ND floor. Although ...

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...heir last encounter just before a Christmas Eve, Twyla runs into Roberta. Both girls talk, Roberta tells Twyla, “And you were right. We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls. Only them. But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did, too. You and me but that’s not true. And I don’t want you to carry that around. Is just that I wanted to do it so bad that day- wanting to is doing it.”
After reading this short story, “Recitatif,” it sums up the story exploring the relationship between the two girls never revealing the ethnic background from any of the characters. Even though the story shows many controversies that should pull the girls apart from one another based on their ethnic background it does not stop the girls from knowing each other better only letting their similarities and the memories bring them close together as friends at the end.