Recitatif is a short fiction story by a novelist Toni Morrison. The story opens up with a girl named Twyla telling her life story. Morrison writes this story from first person view which creates this sort of delusion in which a reader might think that he is reading somebody’s diary. The story unravels as Twyla writes about her memories of shelter in which she was put due to her mother poll dancing. In the shelter she meets Roberta, another girl whose parents have not died yet. Roberta was black and this at first was a barrier for Twyla as she was always told “that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny.” Throughout the time in the shelter girls became close friends and by the time one of them had to leave they got attached to each other. The way first part of the story is being told might seem very familiar to readers who have had similar memories when they were kids. Later on story picks up from the time when Twyla was working at Howards Johnson’s. There by some accident she meets Roberta and tries to talk to her but, Roberta seems hostile to Twyla and leaves the place. Throughout the story Twyla will meet Roberta couple more times but each time something stands between two old friends. Roberta tells her friend how she used to kick Maggie who was a black (or Roberta at least thought so) woman working in the shelter. This side of story Twyla has not remember and will never remember through the story because none of them know actually if it ever happened.
The way I understood this story is that racial thoughts never elude us. Even if we never act as racists outside, inside we still might have some wrong thoughts lurking around. In the story these thoughts have stood between two little girls who in childhood were best friends and did not think of each other as another race.