Toni Morrison employs the use of ambiguity and the absence of explicit racial markers to explore themes of identity, memory, and the complexities of race in her short story “Recitatif”. The story follows the narrator, Twyla and her friend from childhood, Roberta as they navigate their lives and each other. Morrison makes a point not to specify which woman is white and which woman is black, encouraging the audience to form our own conclusions founded from our own biases and what we have been taught about race. 

Twyla and Roberta first meet at St. Bonny’s, an orphanage/group home that the girls have been assigned roomates in. We are first introduced to race’s role in this story when Twyla notices Roberta is the opposite race and comments that her mother wouldn’t want her rooming with “a girl from a whole other race”. Morrison does not specify which girl is which race, and instead switches the focus to the girl’s shared misfortune of being “dumped” kids, or children who were removed from the care of their parents, rather than being orphaned. We are then able to see why the girls have gravitated towards each other: despite their different appearances, they share similar troubles and that is ultimately what matters to them. 

Morrison uses the theme of memory to draw attention to how our own experiences and selves can shape how we remember things. The second time the girls are reunited as adults, Roberta tells Twyla that Maggie was black and that the girls kicked her, which is a surprise to Twyla because she remembered Maggie as white. While Roberta later admits to fabricating the girls having kicked Maggie, Maggie’s race is still left unspecified, showing how subjective and un-concrete memory is. 

Lastly, the women have a conflict over the integration of schools and their children being sent to different schools. While we are still unsure which woman is white and which is black, we see that they are on different sides because of their respective races, and this causes a rift between them despite their childhood disregard of race, showing how race complicates relationships when Twyla says “I couldn’t believe it. Roberta had turned into the enemy”. Morrison’s ambiguity in this part of the story lets the reader see into this conflict even more deeply, without our own opinions on race making us see one side more than the other.

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