A Coming Together or Separation?
From “Recitatif,” by Toni Morrison:
“So what if they go to another school? My boy’s being bussed too, and I don’t mind. Why should you?”
“It’s not about us, Twyla. Me and you. It’s about our kids.”
“What’s more us than that?”
“Well, it is a free country.”
“Not yet, but it will be.”
“What the hell does that mean? I’m not doing anything to you.”
“You really think that?”
“I know it.”
“I wonder what made me think you were different.”
“I wonder what made me think you were different.”
“Look at them,” I said. “Just look. Who do they think they are? Swarming all over the place like they own it. And now they think they can decide where my child goes to school. Look at them, Roberta. They’re Bozos.”
One of the women in this story, either Twyla or Roberta, is meant to be black. The other, either Twyla or Roberta, is meant to be white.
Toni Morrison wrote her only published short story, “Recitatif,” to blur the lines between those characters and races. She keeps her language vague, and as a result, even though you follow the lives of these two women from a shared childhood in an orphanage and through various points of adulthood, you can only guess to which race either one belongs.
In an introduction to the hardcover printing of this story, acclaimed writer Zadie Smith points out that this vagueness is, in fact, the point. Morrison created her story as an experiment; Smith says: “The subject of the experiment is the reader.”
Further, Smith quotes Morrison’s own words as she explains that “Recitatif” is “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.”
You can see racial code erasure arise in all parts of the story. In the example I’ve shown here which takes place in the 1960’s, one of the women is picketing against the bussing of children. Your internal biases might lean you toward one side of the issue or the other:
Is it the white woman or the black woman who is picketing?
Is it the white woman or the black woman who supports the bussing?
Is it the white woman or the black woman who would bring up the issue: “It’s about our kids.”
Is it the white woman or the black woman who would categorize the opposing group (which may not be comprised entirely of a single racial ethnicity) as “Bozos?”
These sorts of opaque questions occupy an uncomfortable place in human attitudes. The idea that someone might think that one racial group is more likely to boycott, use their child’s welfare as a shield, or ridicule a single group as if no individual identities are present, comes across as insulting to anyone who might think themselves beyond an unenlightened quick association from one thing to another.
Yet “Recitatif” shows time and time again, with readers of all races, that our flawed manner of seeing the world always makes an appearance. You see it above. You see it in other parts of the story where you categorize the sort of person who would wear a certain type of jewelry or enjoy a specific food or speak with an affectation.
It seems impossible to read Morrison’s short story without forming some opinion about who is who. Awkwardly, the notion that we feel we have to form an opinion both explains and exacerbates the issue.
Not to willingly leave the point at that — dodging further discussion about what it means to be human and flawed and living in a society where “racial identity is critical” — but I don’t know that I could add anything more than smarter people than me have already said.
I hope only that my previous words will help you form a basis of understanding as context for the passage I’ve chosen. Otherwise, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants and wholeheartedly recommending their original work.
What I can add further comes from my own experience as a reader — the thought that kept replaying in my mind throughout the experience of “Recitatif”: It is interesting that the removal of racial codes makes the story feel divisive.
It’s like I pointed out a few paragraphs ago. I kept feeling like I needed to form an opinion and categorize one girl/woman from the other. Even the secondary characters, like their parents or the unnamed people at the picket line, became part of that need. I wanted to know who they were so I could make the story more full in my mind, and in wanting to know, I dug myself into the problematic space of viewing a person through a limited lens.
I can seek to see race and culture as an important, positive aspect of how a person becomes who they are, but I must also transcend the barrier of holding race as the only indicator of a person’s manner. If in these instances, I see Twyla or Roberta as the one on the picket line, no matter how good my intention, I feel like a lesser person for having used only the sparse information found in “Recitatif” to make that judgment.
Morrison mitigates the negative moments in her story with many positive ones. The girls were friends before they butted heads as adults. They grew up, separated, came together, separated, and came together again as changed people in a hectic world.
And now that I’ve strayed perhaps extraordinarily far away from my usual purpose of this newsletter — to show a story moment that impressed me — I do want to point out the moment of the scene above that solidified, for me, the essence of that mitigation of negatives.
“I wonder what made me think you were different.”
“I wonder what made me think you were different.”
While reading this, it felt to me like Twyla and Roberta said this line at the same instant. Other people will surely see their lines as separate, as printed. In either case, I see the womens’ paths merge to address an idea that forms the core of this story: How and why did we think of each other as a good person?
It’s like their races get magnified but also set to the side. Magnified because of how much the perception of race can play in becoming a “good person.” Set aside because, in their linked thoughts about each other, the answer to why they are different could and should be something that doesn’t have anything to do with the color of someone’s skin.
This odd moment of commonality isn’t exactly a mitigation of negatives through a hug and smiles. It was something much more and much better. One of the most impactful moments of my read.