"Recitatif" By: Toni Morrison

I am familiar with the author, Toni Morrison because some of my family have a book by her. This is the first time I read her story.

What is Recitatif? I had to looked it up. From my understanding is that Recitatif mean in this story is dialogic that interludes during operas and oratories.

The main characters is Twyla and Roberta as both have similar situation but the only difference is their skin. This story seem to be more of racial issues through friendship as they have a hard time to express out of their comfort zone. Both of them could have dislike each other just due by their skin but since they both are lonely and their mothers are ill they stay together to become friend. Does that mean it take sacrifice to become someone else friend? Since it hard to identified what race is in Twyla and Roberta, I think the author purposely telling the reader that the skin does not matter as we all are not much that difference. I feel that Twyla is black while Roberta is white due to Roberta was not helping Twyla from the crowd of people pushing Twyla's car back & forth. Although, I do not actually know. I said this because it seem like Roberta was able to have more privilege than Twlya because I notice that Roberta was able to have easier life than Twlya but then again I could not say it for sure. Roberta can be black as people may perceive because she was not able to read at young age. Also Roberta emotionally blamed Twlya of what happened to Maggie, who is deaf and mute worked at St. Bonny's, stated that Maggie is black and how she was beaten up. Twyla did not see that which could mean Maggie may look more white to her. This story is unsolved. Since I mostly can only see Twyla side of the story I think I would know the story better if I see Roberta side of the story. Both still remain friend and I think the key. About Maggie misfortune, it kind sad how Maggie had to bear with the gar girls who bullying her which Twyla and Roberta can not do anything about it because they are young kids and are afraid of the gar girls. When both of them was young they did want to hurt Maggie, but then when they became older they realized that it wrong for them to think that way.

To be honest when I first see the name Twyla I thought it was mispronounce by the accent of the person for some reason till I realized that is the actual name because of the repetition it is used in the story.

The story contain a metaphor of salt and pepper I suppose not only because one of the characters is black and the other is white. When you have a small container of salt and the other container is black, the salt and pepper is separated. This is like in the story they make the skin of their race separate from each other when they fight such like when they was protesting about integrated school.

This is the most common in many societies where ones who perceive someone is different create fear and discomfort lead to separating into a group in different categories.