Throughout her short story “Recitatif”, Tony Morrison analyzes the politics of race and disability. Morrison highlights our tendency for subconsciously categorizing one another based on outside appearances. This demonstrates how deeply racism and other prejudices are engrained in us. It is disheartening because we try to squeeze an entire person into five single letters. Are they B-L-A-C-K or are they W-H-I-T-E? We feel that we must give meaning to everything and everyone. However, this is impossible. A person’s skin color or disability does not define them, their health, or their abilities. Consequently, Maggie represents the minority of individuals who are invisible to society and have no voice due to their race, disability, or other features that cause them to upset the social norms. While Maggie’s character was merely a memory for the main characters, she personifies both Twyla and Roberta’s conflicting companionship and the skewed expectations brought on by our culture.
The girls at St. Bonaventure, including Twyla and Roberta, harassed and tortured Maggie. Her disabilities were all that they acknowledged because they never took the
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“Maggie was my dancing mother,” (Morrison 214). Twyla pairs her resentment toward her careless mother with the pity that she felt for Maggie. As Twyla compares her feelings of helplessness to Maggie’s, she states “I knew she wouldn’t scream, couldn’t—just like me—and I was glad about that.” (Morrison 213). Roberta also admits that she had wanted to kick Maggie. She identifies her feelings of desertion by her mother with Maggie. “Twyla and Roberta revise their memories of Maggie in order to transfer their anxieties and anger toward their mothers onto her…” (Androne 134). It is interesting to note that both the girls relate their mothers to Maggie even though Roberta’s mother is described as the opposite of Twyla’s