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Janie Wilson
Mr. Newman
English 101: Rhetoric
5 November 2014
It Does Matter if Youre Black or White
Although it is clear from the start of Toni Morrisons Recitatif that one of the
characters is white and other character is black, it is not clear in the text which character is
which. Despite the races of the two characters of whom are both girls, they seem to get along just
fine. Gender only plays a minimal role in the story because of the fact that both of the characters
are female and there are few male characters in the story. In Toni Morrisons short story,
Recitatif, race is a more important factor than gender because it is crucial to the way the story is
written.
The main characters Twyla and Roberta meet in a home for girls where every staff
member there is female as well. The story depicts no male/female conflict...the only male who
appears in the story at all is some police officer (Goldstein-Shirley 4). Gender can not be
significant in the story if only one gender is illustrated throughout. Goldstein-Shirley argues that
the bracketing of gender contributes to the texts task of concentrating the readers attention on
race. I agree because with essentially no reference to men in the story, male and female readers
are not really given the chance to respond to the story differently; making gender insignificant. If
gender was more important than race, the focus would be on men and women, not solely women
and the race of them. Race is a factor throughout the story that is in the back of the readers mind
constantly because of the fact that from the beginning to the end, the race of the two main
characters remains unknown.

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By withholding the critical information not only of Twylas and Robertas racial
identities, but that of Maggie,too, leaves it to the reader to complete the story (Goldstein-Shirley
7). Early on in the story, it is left up to the reader to decide which character is black and which is
white; that idea of questioning race always lingering in their mind. One might assume that
because of Robertas literacy problem that she is black because of preconceived notions about
African Americans, or because of her wealth that she is white. When the reader acknowledges
and questions these stereotypes, he or she contributes to the deconstruction of racism
(Goldstein-Shirley 7). The deconstruction of racism is important to the story because the reader
constantly tries to decipher the race of the characters throughout; not the gender.
Yet in Recitatif, a self-conscious literary experiment is unmasking labels, Morrison
focuses on race to the exclusion of gender (Goldstein-Shirley 4). Toni Morrison excludes
gender in her story to focus on the topic of race for a purpose. That purpose is to challenge the
reader to focus on figuring out the race of the two characters instead of focusing on their gender.
But Morrison does not remove all racial codes from the narrative, she only removes explicit
racial identifications of the two characters. There are, however, plenty of codes planted in the
text that the reader is challenged to interpret (Goldstein-Shirley). For example,Twyla describes
her roommate, Roberta, as a whole other race and one who never washes her hair and
smells funny. The racial stereotypes that Twyla gives off are left up to the reader to interpret.
Facts such that there are all girls in the orphanage dont leave any interpretation up to the reader
to figure out gender;only race.
Only race set apart the main characters in the story, not gender. When Twyla and Roberta
meet for the first time they dont have any problems except for the fact that Twylas mother told
her that speaking to Roberta is not right for reasons that I stated in the previous paragraph. When

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Twyla and Robertas mothers meet, Twylas mother calls Robertas mother a bitch because she
didnt shake her hand. In that moment right there it is left up to the reader to determine if that
instance was because of racial views of each other or simply because they did not like each other
because of their children.
As I have argued, this tactic of the short story furthers the texts strategy of eliciting
readers complicity in deconstructing racism by concentrating their attention solely on that aspect
of the story (Goldstein-Shirley 8). Toni Morrison chooses to have the main focus of
Recitatif on race and the deconstruction of racism instead of on gender for the purpose of
challenging the reader to focus on only one aspect because it is more important than the other.

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