Toni Morrison’s absence of explicit racial markers made me dig into possible clues about Roberta and Twyla’s race, but it was so interesting and amazing to me because I would read and assume something, and later on, I would think something different, and I believe that was the entire point, to prove that we have pre-conceived and stereotypes ideas about how certain races should act, look, think, etc. One of the examples is Twyla said her mother would not like Roberta and her mother, that she would think they are smelly people. To me this sounded like a white racist mother who wouldn’t like her daughter to be roommate with a black girl. Another example is, the day the mothers came to visit, Twyla saw Roberta’s mom’s huge cross, this amade me think about Roberta’s mother as a black religious woman who brought chicken for lunch for her daughter, and made me imagine Twyla’s mother as a white racist stripper woman, this conclusion came to me si since she refers so much to her about dancing.

But later on, there was a twist at the school, for me, it sounded like Roberta was in a privileged white neighborhood that did not want her kids to be mixed in schools with other races, so these examples all contradict it self, making me think I was following stereotypes and implanted ideas.

 In that orphanage where they were, they were just two girls different from other kids because their parents were alive, after all as Twyla mentioned, not even the Puerto Ricans would play with them. Making me think, was Twyla Puerto Rican? Was she expected to belong to one this groups because they were together by races?

But here, no one will mix with them not because of their race, but because they were not orphans. This read intrigues us because we do not know exactly what values is defend by each character, and at the end of the day, I’m not sure if it matter any more, it matters the message behind how the lack of information allows us to assume

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