Recitatif A Story

Very cute short story, I feel like it has a quite accurate description of female friendships

"A pretty mother on earth is better than a beautiful dead one in the sky even if she did leave you all alone to go dancing." *** Constructions of beauty, violence, and identity in Recitatif: Despite Morrison’s deliberate decision to keep the races of her two female characters ambiguous, this short story is worth examining, for it touches upon the similar burden of conformity to the Eurocentric ideal. Twyla and Roberta’ are eight-year-old girls who form a close bond at the shelter based on their absent mothers. The two are bullied by the older “gar girls” (Morrison 253), who are said to wear “lipstick and eyebrow pencil ... while [watching] TV" (244). Such description implies the girls’ conformity to the beauty ideals promoted in mass media. However, despite their menacing demeanors, Twyla recalls them being runaways. Morris explains this was all a facade—being victims themselves, the gar girls enacted violence on Twyla and Roberta to reclaim their lost agency (166). Some years later, when Twyla and Roberta met again, the former was shocked to discover the latter’s radical change in appearance, describing how “her huge hair was sleek now” (Morrison 252), and her fancy outfit and makeup “made the big girls look like nuns” (249). Through her fiction, Morrison sheds light on the marginalization of Black women in contemporary American society. She effectively problematizes the everyday reality of beauty standards that women face by going one step further to argue that the women of her community are more vulnerable to the advertisements disseminated through mass media as they cultivate feelings of inferiority due to their inability to conform to the Eurocentric ideal. The shared trauma of her female characters proves how such feelings eventually culminate in self-hatred following the disillusionment with the imposition of these far-fetched white beauty standards. Unfortunately, this lived reality is something African American women still contend with to this day. Seemingly, Roberta had fallen into the rabbit hole of consumerism in attempts to alter her appearance to fit the conventional ideal as she grew older. Comparably, Twyla’s preoccupation with beauty and keeping up appearances reflects in her sharp observations of other women’s outfits; however, a solid example is when she professes early on that “a pretty mother on earth is better than a beautiful dead one in the sky even if she did leave you all alone to go dancing” (Morrison 247). It implies that Twyla could make peace with a repeatedly absent mother so long as the latter showed up during moments that mattered, i.e., public events, like a chapel visit where the other girls would see her beautiful mother. Collectively, the women in “Recitatif” failed to ignore the beauty standards perpetuated by mass media—which, in turn, caused them to express disapproval at those who depart from conventional norms.

perfect short story. toni morrison does it again.

shoutout to my Eng 113 Rainbows of Voices, Caucasian cis Professor for including this in the reading list

⭐️3 An enjoyable short story that had me captivated throughout. Loved the execution of the short story which is described as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial". My rating is mostly based on how short the short story itself is. Honestly, I would have liked just a couple of more pages since I didn't particularly like the ambiguous ending. Even so, I look forward to reading more from Toni Morrison in the near future.

i have now recommended this to everyone i know