"Shit, shit, shit."

It's easy to believe that, because of her ethnicity, Toni Morrison wrote her only short story "Recitatif" from the view of an African American.  Conveniently, her entire story does just the opposite: it blurs the lines between the races of our two main characters, sending readers on a journey through a large chunk of each other's lives, never quite able to grasp what ethno-centered world each character is living in.

Ironically, I found myself actually using specific references to discriminate each one.  Their names, food, family and even picket signs were all dissected as I read.  This, I believe, is what Morrison wanted her readers to do.  She expertly included unique, individual tokens for each girl that threw the notion of race straight out the window.  And, in the end, isn't that what we really want for our world?  Published in '83, the intense part of racial equality seemed over.  However, 30 years later, we are still arguing over equal rights.

There are also interesting points that "Recitatif" brings up about the offspring of Roberta and Twyla.  I have three cousins in my family who are of mixed race - their father is African American, their mother a mixture of whatever white background exists on her side.  Even as young adults, the two eldest do not associate with only one race.  Gradually, as time goes forward in America, this is becoming more common.  In Morrison's story, their children, while affected in large ways by the closing of schools and obvious racial tensions where they live, are fundamentally all affected the same way.  They all lose out on a learning environment that could wholly enrich their lives - it is the parents who are arguing over the mixed environment.  Race is taught.  If my cousins were living in the time period that Morrison writes about, they would be acknowledged as African American, even if they felt otherwise.  They would lose out on a learning environment too.  I, as their white cousin, would have to make a choice based on what I was taught by those around me, or hope that I was bred with enough common sense to know right from wrong.

The ending, in which Roberta cries, perfectly embodies each part of the confusing feelings speckled throughout the story.  Regardless of who they were, they are each different now.  Her apology, and their mutual understanding that they were only children and young, too, feels like a good enough excuse to end on.  When you are young, you sometimes just don't understand as much as you could.  And her lamenting over Maggie, "Oh shit Twyla.  Shit, shit, shit.  What the hell happened to Maggie?" is a true conveyance of what was wrong with their childhood together at St. Bonny's.  They didn't know.  They simply just didn't know.