Morrison’s Recitatif challenges readers to withdraw from a stereotyped judgment, as they unconsciously try to assign a race to the characters. In this narrative, the readers do not know Twyla and Roberta’s race. We see that at such a young age, Twyla and Roberta have already made expectations of each other because they are aware of their racial difference. Yet despite these differences, they are brought together because of their similar and unfortunate experiences. Recitatif emphasizes on the idea that racial prejudice will always prohibit harmony within races, which is seen in Twyla and Roberta’s friendship.
Twyla and Roberta meet in an orphanage because their mothers cannot look after them. Twyla is placed in the orphanage because her mother “likes to dance all night” (Morrison 1174)…show more content… Whereas, Roberta, her mother is just too sick. They were both abandoned and were not liked by the children there because they “weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents” (Morrison 1174). The unfortunate reality that both of their mothers are alive, but cannot physically care for them becomes their reason and ability to bond. Another distinction is their racial difference. At the age of eight, Twyla is very well aware that Roberta is a different race and she is “sick to [her] stomach…to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race” (Morrison 1174). Also, we can see Twyla’s warped judgment as she mentions how her mom would sometimes tell her “important things” and that one of those was that people from Roberta’s race “never washed their hair and [that] they smelled funny” (Morrison 1174). On the other side, Roberta is also eight years old, and we experience the racial dislike against Twyla’s race through Roberta’s mother as she refuses to shake Twyla’s mother’s hand. Furthermore, both Twyla and Roberta struggled with obtaining academic success, but for very different reasons. Twyla could not comprehend
