Nathan Richardson 1st PeriodTuttle

RecitatifIn Recitatif by Toni Morrison, the argument that race shouldn’t matter in American society is

made through the ambiguity of the character’s races and the narrator’s forgetfulness when it comes to race. In the story, the only line directly implying a difference in race is “we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that’s what the other kids called us sometimes” (1). This statement lets us know that the two main character’s, Twyla and Roberta, are of different races. One is white and one is black. However, we cannot be sure which is which. The use of this ambiguity asks the question of whether race is necessary for a story or if it’s important to recognize a difference in society at all. Maggie is another racially ambiguous character mostly due to the narrator’s uncertainty. “What was she saying? Black? Maggie wasn’t black” (16). The fact that the narrator is unsure about the race of a childhood figure shows that race is not as important as people believe it should be. Twyla becomes obsessed about Maggie’s race and it is made quite obvious that it should not be as important as she makes it sound. Toni Morrison was trying to show America that race complicates a society, and we are so used to it that if we don’t know somebody’s race, it can often be unsettling or irritating.