African American Civil Rights Movement
Around 1955 and 1968, the African American Civil Rights Movement ruled the United States. The movement's key purpose was to make racial injustice and suffering against the African American population illegal. The revolution, like any other strong and influential uprising of the day, struggled for collective reforms in the United States, both emotionally and physically. At this time, public discrimination based on an individual's ethnicity, color, religion, or ethnicity was forbidden. Thus, it would be substantial to claim that the revolution gained significant freedom during this era. There was evidence of increased doubleness for the people of color, which became more appreciated and attractive than before. The freedom that the revolution was seeking led to the revival of the basic rights of the minority groups.
Analyzing Toni Morrison's Racitatif
In this connection, the essay aims at analyzing Toni Morrison's Racitatif, which revolved around racial discrimination and quest for change. Recitatif, published in 1983 is a literacy work revolving around the life of two children who were friends since their childhood (Du Bois 2).
The Unveiling of Racial Identity
The two characters had different racial backgrounds, one being white and the other one black. The protagonists lives over many years while intersect. However, the most interesting part in the tale is that Morrison finishes writing the story without revealing the identity of each character. That is, the readers are only left to know that the story has characters with different races without giving the specific identity of each. Apparently, by failing to unveil the specific races of the two characters, the author intended to demonstrate the notion that people have of categorizing people immediately their race is revealed. By extending the different shared versions of the characters, the author unveils what can happen when the incompatible memory of two people of similar event bumps up against each other. The moment the two friends realize that they have different memories of an important occasion that happened during their childhood, Twyla asks, "I wouldn't forget a thing like that. Wouldn't I?" (Andore 143). The uncertainty of the protagonist connects to the central theme of the story, which is the instability and insecurity of memory.
Maggie and the Ideological Construction of Otherness
In his scholarly work, Du bois reiterates that "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Du Bois 3). In the book, a confounding character lives in fictional deferrals of the author's work. This character distorts the memory of Twyla and Roberta. The narrator of the story believes that the deaf Maggie goes through hard times of life. It is speculated that the gar girls are tormenting the third character. The fact that the central characters constantly remembered what happened to Maggie during their childhood made them live in guilt as they grew older. Throughout the story, the readers realize that Maggie has a metaphoric mission between the main characters in question. Her presence in the tale represents absence and silence. Even if the roles of the main characters are permitted to change throughout the story, Maggie is already caught in a crippling discourse of culture. Besides, Stanley cited that Bhabha states, "The heart of stereotyping is the "concept of 'fixity' in the ideological construction of otherness". He notes that "fixity, as the sign of cultural/historical/racial difference," is a "paradoxical mode of representation" (Stanley 72). Thus, it is believable that there is one character whose ideological construction is fixed is Maggie. Even so, it is also worth adding into the account that the source of disability of this character comes from the central characters.
The Role of Maggie and Uncertainty in Racial Identity
The other important aspect that is important to note is the role that Maggie plays in the story. The most evident is her prosthetic functions (Sklar 147). The story unveils to the readers the existing uncertainty in Maggie's race despite the perception of the two women change over time. Conversely, this can be viewed as a predetermined result of the idea of the narrative misleading leaders regarding the different racial identities between the two characters. In as much as the author brings the readers closer to guessing whom between the two characters has which color, there is still a wide confusion between the two. It needs the readers to read between the lines with a thoughtful analysis to differentiate the characters. Again, the big concern that the readers still have is to brainstorm the race of Maggie regarding all the uncertainties that the readers are presented with throughout the text. The assertion is evident in the excerpt where the author writes, "Maybe I am different now, Twyla. But you're not. You're the same little state kid who kicked a poor old black lady when she was down on the ground. You kicked a black lady and you have the nerve call me a bigot." [...] "What was she saying? Black? Maggie wasn't black" (Stanley 76).
The Complexity of Emotions and Identity
A close examination of the two characters shows that they are at odd with and cannot comprehend the world around them. Despite the fact that Twyla is counter-protesting busing theoretically, the hidden reason why she is taking part in the protest is to communicate with Roberta. Before then, it was made clear that before seeing Roberta, she was green about the topic (Morrison 19). Ostensibly, this must have been the main reason for addressing her signs directly towards her longtime friend, which confuses the other demonstrators. The strange signs that Twyla showed also suggested that she cared so much about their relationship. The character that she depicted showed that the friendship between the two was more important to her than the identity of being a mother. To some extent, the readers find sense in this statement. The protagonists became too close to an extent that people would view them as sisters regardless of their racial differences (Andore 137). As such, each character formed a sense of her identity through the other. Consequently, Twyla based her attachment to Roberta, an attachment that later turned out to be painful because of its instability.
Socioeconomic Inequality and its Manifestation
The breakthroughs that Twyla went through during this difficult time demonstrate that she comprehends her emotions' complexity better than the way her childhood friend does. Moreover, she can now understand that the anger she had towards Maggie was a displaced anger at her mother. At that point, the protagonist begins to conceptualize the frustrations at her vulnerability as a child with no voice caught up in a situation that is beyond her control. This is evident when the author writes, "Maggie was my dancing mother," and that both women had "nobody inside" (Stanley 77). Throughout the development of the story, there is evidence of a stark manifestation of socioeconomic inequality, which is presented between the central characters. Many readers would correlate the social gap to the racial diversity even if the author does not mention this. While Roberta seem to lead a fancy life wearing luxurious clothes that looks oblivious to the privilege of her class, this makes her counterpart tired observing the rich (Morrison 27). The fur coat that Roberta puts on can be viewed as an association with the fur that Mary puts on during the scene at the chapel. While Mary looked inappropriate and cheap, Roberta represented the picture of elegance.
Conclusion
Concisely, Recitatif is a short tale published by Toni Morrison, an African American narrator. The short story examines how the relationship between the two central characters is shaped by their differences in terms of race. Even so, the author fails to disclose the racial identity of the two characters other than quoting their names, making it hard for the readers to tell whom between them is black and who is white. Rather than dwelling into the diverse cultures of the African Americans, Morrison depicts how the divide between the races in the culture of America is contingent on the whites and the blacks defining themselves in opposition to each other. On the other hand, the narrator employs Maggie to bring forward the ideological construction of otherness through her disability (Sklar 147). Thus, it is justifiable to assert that the story does not give the readers an opportunity to be sure which character is white and which one is black explicitly.
Works Cited
Andore, Helane Adams. “Revised Memories and Colliding Identities: Absence and Presencein Morrison’s “Recitatif” and Viramontes’s “Tears on My Pillow”.” 322 (2007): 133-50
Du Bois, W. E. B. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Hayes, Floyd W. A Turbulent Voyage. San Diego: Collegiate Press, 2000.
Morrison, Toni, ed. Birth of a nation’hood : gaze, script, and spectacle in the O.J. Simpson case. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997
Sklar, Howard. “Stereotype, Sympathy, and Disability in Toni Morrison‟s “Recitatif”.” What the Hell Happened to Maggie? Helsinki:
Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto. Maggie in Toni Morrison’s “Récitatif: The Africanist Presenceand Disability Studies. 36 vols. 71-88.
