Recitatif

by Toni Morrison

As Twyla and Roberta discover, it’s hard to admit a shared humanity with your neighbor if they will not come with you to reexamine a shared history.

Imagine thinking of history this way! As a thing personally directed at you. As a series of events structured to make you feel one way or another, rather than the precondition of all our lives?

Whether Twyla or Roberta is the somebody who has lived within the category of “white” we cannot be sure, but Morrison constructs the story in such a way that we are forced to admit the fact that other categories, aside from the racial, also produce shared experiences. Categories like being poor, being female, like being at the mercy of the state or the police, like living in a certain zip code, having children, hating your mother, wanting the best for your family. We are like and not like a lot of people a lot of the time. White may be the most powerful category in the racial hierarchy, but if you’re an eight-year-old girl in a state institution with a delinquent mother and no money, it sure doesn’t feel that way. Black

Easy, I thought. Everything is so easy for them. They think they own the world.