Recitatif by Toni Morrison1

In the United States the movement reigned between 1955 and 1968 named African-American Civil Rights Movement purposed to illegalize racial suffering and discrimination against African Americans. Like every powerful and enormous movement, it provoked collective changes in the American society both physically and mentally. Discrimination based on race, nation, religion, or color is banned every public accommodations, so it can be said that they gained significant freedom. Doubleness for African-Americans became more attractive and it is started to be analyzed and revived more broadly thanks to this freedom. W. E. B. Du Bois, for instance, suggested a notion double consciousness and describe as caught between a self-conception as an American and as a person of African origin (2). In this sense this work aims at examining the narrative Recitatif by Toni Morrison, which was published in 1983. Recitatif is about two childrens who are friends from childhood, one black one white, as they grow up. Her main characters lives intersect over many years. The prime point about the story is that Morrison never gives us characters race than by doing so she is intended to reveal the fact that human beings have tendency to categorize people immediately. By overlapping different characters versions of shared history, Morrison shows what can happen when two peoples incompatible memories of the same event bump up against each other. When Roberta and Twyla discover that they have startlingly different memories of an important event in their childhood, Twyla asks, I wouldnt forget a thing like that. Would I? Her uncertainty points to the storys themethe insecurity and instability of memorythat is also conveyed formally via narrative collage. (Andore 143)

Du bois states that always looking at ones self through the eyes of others, of measuring ones soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity (Du Bois 3). In Recitatif there is a third character dwelling in fictional deferrals of Morrisons work, gives distortion Robertas and Twylas memories: deaf Maggie is tormented by the shelters older gar girls. The memory of what happened to Maggie caused Twyla and Roberta to feel guilt as they grew older. Maggie who has a metaphoric mission between two main characters represents silence and absence. Even if Twylas and Robertas roles are permitted to change during Recitatif, Maggie is captured in a crippling cultural discourse (Stanley 72). As cited in Stanley, Bhabha argues thatthe heart of stereotyping is the concept of fixity in the ideological construction of otherness. He notes that fixity, as the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference, is a paradoxical mode of representationHence it can be said that there is one character for whom ideological construction of otherness fixed is Maggie whose main sign of difference, on the contrary Twyla and Roberta, is her disability.

More importantly Maggie has prosthetic functions (Sklar, 147). The narrative provides us with uncertainty of Maggies race inasmuch as two womens perception of her changes again and again. On the other side, this can be perceived as predicted result of the narratives idea with misleading readers concerning racial identities of Twyla and Roberta. Although Morrison guides us to guess which girl has which color throughout the story, we cannot be sure their skin color. What about Maggies race with respect to uncertainty during all text.

Maybe I am different now, Twyla. But youre not. Youre the same little state kid who kicked a poor old black lady when she was down on the ground. You kicked a black lady and you have the nerve call me a bigot. [] What was she saying? Black? Maggie wasnt black. She wasnt black, I said Like hell she wasnt, and you kicked her. We both did. You kicked a black lady who couldnt even scream. Liar! Youre the liar Why dont you just go home and leave us alone, huh? (Recitatif 222)

She has taken the traumatic memory of Maggie's victimization and transformed it into a site for her own feelings of victimization, substituting herself for Maggie. As it is seen Maggies racial identity cannot be detected precisely like that of Twyla and Roberta.

To sum up, Recitatif is a short story which is published by African-American narrator Toni Morrison. The story explores how the relationship between the two main characters is shaped by their racial difference. Morrison does not, however, disclose which character is white and which is black. Rather than delving into the distinctive culture of African Americans, she illustrates how the divide between the races in American culture at large is dependent on blacks and whites defining themselves in opposition to one another. On the other hand, Morrison employs Maggie to explicate ideological construction of otherness via using her disability and she also gives prosthetic meanings to her (Sklar 147). It is true to say that this makes us not sure to know which character is black or white explicitly.

References:

Andore, Helane Adams. "Revised Memories and Colliding Identities: Absence and Presence in Morrison's "Recitatif" and Viramontes's "Tears on My Pillow"." 32.2 (2007): 133-50. Du Bois, W. E. B. "Of Our Spiritual Strivings." Hayes, Floyd W.A Turbulent Voyage.SanDiego: Collegiate Press, 2000.Morrison, Toni, ed.Birth of a nation'hood : gaze, script, and spectacle in the O.J. Simpsoncase. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997Sklar, Howard. "Stereotype, Sympathy, and Disability in Toni Morrisons Recitatif."Whatthe Hell Happened to Maggie? Helsinki:Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto.Maggie in Toni Morrison's "Rcitatif: The Africanist Presenceand Disability Studies. 36 vols. 71-88.