Subverting the Racial Codes and the Role of Maggie in "Recitatif" by Toni Morrison (by Seray and Irem)

In the early 1960's, throughout much of the South, African-American people’s right to vote was denied, they were barred from public facilities, subjected to insults and violence 
and, in the North, black Americans also faced discrimination in housing, employment, education and many other areas. Because of these reasons, many African-Americans started to protest and claimed their rights in what became known as the Civil Rights movement. This subject substantially took part in US literature. Toni Morrison also draws attention to this subject and she is doing  it in a different way.
     “Recitatif” tells a story of two girls, Twyla and Roberta, both abandoned by their mothers. They first meet in an orphange where they spend four months together and then meet four times as adults in different places and situations in life. It is evident that these two girls are from different races and this can be understood from thelines: “-it was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race”(Recitatif 2253) and “-that we looked like salt and pepper standing there..” (2254). On the other hand it is not clearly emphasized which girl is black and which one is white and the reason why Toni Morison leaves it unclear is that she tries to raise consciousness. On the other hand, although it is not mentioned directly, the story gives us some clues about their racial identities. For example, Twyla remembers her mother having warned her that the people of Roberta’s race “never washed their hair and they smelled funny” (2253). Twyla validates Mary’s stereotypical notion by saying, “Roberta sure did. Smell funny, I mean” (2253). This may be a reference to black people according to white canon and it can be considered that Roberta is black. Morever, another example for this is lack of  knowledge of Twyla about Jimi Hendrix. When Roberta says that she and her friends have an appointment with Hendrix, Twyla thinks about someone else and it can be seen in these lines: “ ‘Hendrix? Fantastic!’ I said. ‘Really fantastic. What's she doing now?’ Roberta coughed on her cigarette and the two guys rolled their eyes up at the ceiling. ‘Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix, asshole. He's only the biggest-Oh, wow. Forget it.” (2258).

However much racial coding the short story contains, “Recitatif” shows that racial stereotyping is based on illusion, since one can never be certain about the reality of the story. For instance, the examples which are given above can be also deceptive because blacks can also have a prejudice against the smell of whites and,  additionally, Jimi Hendrix appealed to a lot of white people at that time. Therefore, it is still ambigious which girl is black and which one is white because the decision is left to the reader to conclude, since everyone can interpret these clues according to their own experiences in life. By giving these clues, without conclusion, Morrison subverts traditional stereotypes and myths concerning blackness and whiteness. For example, it is therefore likely that Twyla's mother, Mary thinks that “beauty, order, cleanliness, and praise” are connected with the white race. This hypothesis is subverted, though, as we meet the mothers of the two girls: Twyla reports her mother having looked cheap and ragged in a “fur jacket with the pocket linings so ripped she had to pull to get her hands out of them.” (2256). In addition, in the scene, Twyla is situated in a serving position and she works in the coffee shop where Roberta is a customer. This might shows that the servant-role associated with black characters is subverted in the story. So, it can be said that the story has several racial codes but they are used in order to deconstruct the stereotypes in people’s minds.


There is another important character in the story besides these two girls named Maggie, who is mute and most probably deaf. Maggie has several significant roles in this story. One of them is that she might be the representation of African-American people in general. She is mute, she has legs like paranthesis and her disability symbolizes the African American presence as the stereotypical “Other”. For instance, “Maggie fell down there once.The kitchen woman with legs like paranthesis. And the big girls laughed at her.” (Pg 2254). In this line, Maggie needs help but no one helps her and the big girls make fun of her like white people do to African-Americans.

     Another role of Maggie is that she is used here similarly as a surrogate body through which the protagonists reflect their own experiences and consequently the reader can consider his or her relationship with stereotypes. For example, Twyla says that “Maggie was my dancing mother” (2265) and she does not help Maggie when she falls and Twyla admits that she wants to harm Maggie, as well because she replaces Maggie as her mother who is not with her, and due to her mother's absentness, Twyla blames her mother and wants to harm her. Therefore it can be said that Twyla and Roberta each perceives the mute Maggie as her own unresponsive, rejecting mother, and therefore hates and wantes to harm her. Morever, the character of  Maggie helps us to understand races of two girls because each girl perceives Maggie according to their own experiences. For instance, when they meet in Food Emporium, Twyla thinks that Maggie fell in the orchard but Roberta says that she didn't fall and the other girls pushed her down. In addition, when they meet again in front of the school, Roberta insists on the fact that they kicked Maggie when she fell by saying that “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 to call me a bigot” (2264).These lines can show us that although Twyla remembers Maggie as a sandy-coloured woman, Roberta perceives her as a black woman and tries to protect her, so the reader can speculate that she is also black and she reflects her own situation in society through Maggie. 

    In conclusion, in this story, Toni Morrison tries to deconstruct racial stereotypes and, in order to do that, she leaves the races of the protagonists unclear because she tries to make the reader  interpret the race issue according to their own experiences. Additionally, she uses the character Maggie so as to  help the reader understand the protagonists' inner world and sense of diffidence.