Analysis Of Recitatif By Toni Morrison

In “Recitatif” Toni Morrison makes it a point to not assign races to any of her other characters besides Twyla and Roberta. By doing this, she shows that humans do have the tendency to categorize other people immediately. This categorization instantly begins when Twyla explains how her mother said that African American people “never washed their hair and they smell funny” (243). Morrison uses this same concept throughout the rest of the story to show what happens when Roberta and Twyla’s compare their conflicting memories of the same events. Since Twyla narrates the story, we get to see first hand how she is affected by these differing memories and how her emotions create two of the story’s themes, insecurity and vulnerability.