Recitatif

recitative, n. and adj.

1. A style of musical declamation intermediate between singing and
ordinary speech, used esp. in the dialogue and narrative parts of
an opera or oratorio
2. Words or passages intended to be delivered in recitative.
3. A musical part or passage (intended to be) delivered in recitative;
a piece of music that accompanies such a part or passage.
4. The tone or rhythm typical of a particular language.

Now rare.
Of the nature of a recital or repetition.
recite, v.
1. To state (a relevant fact) in a deed or other legal document.
Also without clause as object.
2. To mention or speak of (a single person or thing).
3. To mention separately or in order (a number or set of
things); to give a list or catalogue of; to enumerate, list. In
later use passing into sense.
4. To relate, report, or describe; to give an account or detailed
description of.
recite, v.
1. To state (a relevant fact) in a deed or other legal document.
Also without clause as object.
2. To mention or speak of (a single person or thing).
3. To mention separately or in order (a number or set of
things); to give a list or catalogue of; to enumerate, list. In
later use passing into sense.
4. To relate, report, or describe; to give an account or detailed
description of.
Récit, nm.
Narration de faits inventés ou reels.

Narration of invented or real facts.

recitatif as:
• Music, rhythm, ordinary speech
• An account, an account of events, story, narrative
• Catalogue, enumeration, list
• Detailed description
• Tone or rhythm particular to a language
• -> can be extended to thinking about ritual, chanting,
invocation, memory
• Monteverdi, Orfeo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lYTFO7FxG4

• Mozart, Queen of the Night

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuBeBjqKSGQ
“My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick. That’s why we were taken to
St. Bonny’s. People want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were
in a shelter, but it really wasn’t bad. No big long room with one hundred beds like
Bellevue. There were four to a room, and when Roberta and me came, there was a
shortage of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406 and could go from
bed to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every night
and for the whole four months we were there we never picked one out as our own
permanent bed.” (3)
“My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick. That’s why we were taken to
St. Bonny’s. People want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were
in a shelter, but it really wasn’t bad. No big long room with one hundred beds like
Bellevue. There were four to a room, and when Roberta and me came, there was a
shortage of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406 and could go from
bed to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every
night and for the whole four months we were there we never picked one out as
our own permanent bed.” (3)
“My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick. That’s why we were taken to
St. Bonny’s. People want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were
in a shelter, but it really wasn’t bad. No big long room with one hundred beds like
Bellevue. There were four to a room, and when Roberta and me came, there was a
shortage of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406 and could go from
bed to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every
night and for the whole four months we were there we never picked one out as
our own permanent bed.” (3)

• Introduces us to interchangeability, instability of place/identity, mobility, shifting,

change, inconstancy, impermanence, repetition
”It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was
something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.”
(4)
”It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was something
else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.” (4)

“looked like salt and pepper standing there and that’s what the other kids called us
sometimes” (5)

• The first quote introduces a pause -> asks us to return to an earlier detail to try and answer
the racial question:
• -> “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.”
• This return can be thought in relation to recitative (repetition, recitation); we need to
return to an ordinary detail
• What kind of mother dances all night? A white mother? A black mother?
• What kind of mother is sick so much so she must put her child in an orphanage? A white
mother or a black mother?
”It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was
something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.
And Mary, that’s my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would stop
dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she said
was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did.” (4)
”It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was
something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.
And Mary, that’s my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would stop
dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she
said was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta
sure did.” (4)
”It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning—it was
something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race.
And Mary, that’s my mother, she was right. Every now and then she would stop
dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of the things she said
was that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did.
Smell funny, I mean.” (4)
“We were eight years old and got F’s all the time. Me because I couldn’t remember
what I read or what the teacher said. And Roberta because she couldn’t read at all
and didn’t even listen to the teacher. She wasn’t good at anything except jacks, at
which she was a killer: pow scoop pow scoop pow scoop.”
We didn’t’ like each other all that much at first but nobody else wanted to play
with us because we weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We
were dumped.” (5)

“Almost all were real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were the
only ones dumped and the only ones with F’s in three classes including gym.” (9)

• More repetition (recitative) -> what effect does this have?

• What is the relationship between repetition and memory?
• Repetition can create steady order, a beat
• But repetition in this case creates doubt, uncertainty, something is amiss, or
uneasy, did we forget something?
• Repetition is used as a technique to remember (recital); here is it being played
with as a literary technique to do the opposite -> to disturb our memory: “Didn’t I
just read that?”
• Morrisons starts to slightly cast doubt on the reader/narrative -> amplifies our
ambivalent desire to read race in Twyla and Roberta
• Recitatif as a title is taken both thematically and structurally
• Repetition, narrative accounting, memory, return, etc., is both a theme/plot element (WHAT)
• and a formal element (structure of repetition, conceptual enumeration) (HOW)
• All of the associations (recite, recital), denotations (dictionary definition), connotations
(extended meanings), and relationships (music, opera) contribute to the texture of the short
story
Repetition and racial ambiguity
• “Roberta hated it and left whole pieces of things on her plate: Spam, Salisbury
steak—even Jell-O with fruit cocktail in it—and she didn’t’ care if I ate what she
wouldn’t. Mary’s idea of supper was popcorn and a can of Yoo-hoo. Hot mashed
potatoes and two weenies was like Thanksgiving for me.” (6)

• “I sneaked a look at Roberta. Her mother had brought chicken legs and ham
sandwiches and oranges and a whole box of chocolate-covered grahams. Roberta
drank milk from a thermos while her mother read the Bible to her.” (13-14)

• Which food is black? Which food is white?

“I saw Mary right away. She had on those green slacks I hated and hated even more
because she didn’t know we were going to chapel? And that fur jacket with the
pocket linings so ripped she had to pull to get her hands out of them. But her face
was pretty—like always and she smiled and waved like she was the little girl
looking for her mother—not me.” (10-11)

“But I couldn’t stay mad at Mary while she was smiling and hugging me and
smelling of Lady Esther dusting powder.” (11)
“Roberta promised to write every day, which was really sweet of her because she
couldn’t read a lick so how could she write anybody.” (15)

“[Roberta’s] own hair was so big and wild I could hardly see her face. But the eyes.
I would know them anywhere. She had a powder-blue halter and shorts outfit and
earrings the size of bracelets. Talk about lipstick and eyebrow pencil. She made the
big girls look like nuns.” (16)
• Is Twyla a black or white name?
• Is Roberta a black or white name?
• Is a mother who dances all night a black or white mother?
• Is Mary a white or black woman’s name?
• Is Roberta being good at jacks related to race? (poor kids who play on the street?)
• Is Mary’s use of Lady Esther face powder “proof” that she is white? Or is she a black woman
who wants to be “American” Is it a sign of her own self-loathing and desire to be white?
• Is Roberta’s illiteracy a sign of race?
• Can we read Roberta’s fashion choices through the lens of race?

• All these details which can be racially coded test us as readers to see what our biases are
towards ideas of foods, clothing, speech, names, etc.
• We begin to catalogue (recitative, recite) our own list of things and experiences that can be racially inflected
• These catalogued items are of the ordinary and the everyday
• The point is NOT to find definitive answers but it opens up a questioning about how race can be coded in
things, actions, attitudes, etc.
• The text resists one type of impulse typical to critical reading which to “discover”
the hidden truth of a text
• As a short story, “Recitatif” is a good exercise in working with discourse or
rhetoric
• What does the ellipsis of race (the erasure of race) do?
• What effect does it have?
• What do we learn?
• “recitatif” as a concept in Morrisons short story becomes symbolic of the kinds of
everyday rehearsals we may make about race and identity each day
• What things accrue racialized meaning? What ordinary things? (think back to
children and doll experiment, children’s imagination of scientists, your
imagination when you read characters, what colour when you think of when you
hear “nude”, etc.)
• The point is not to say you are prejudiced because of these associations but that
race is structured in heterogeneous ways that aren’t always obvious or located in
the colour of skin
Repetition and (racial) memory
“I don’t really know why I dreamt about that orchard so much. Nothing really
happened there. Nothing all that important, I mean. Just the big girls dancing and
playing the radio. Roberta and me watching. Maggie fell down there once.” (7)

”I think it was the day before Maggie fell down that we found out our mother’s
were coming to visit us on the same Sunday.” (9)

• These instances are casually mentioned as if they do not mean anything

• But that should raise alarms for you as a reader
recite, v.
1. To state (a relevant fact) in a deed or other legal document.
Also without clause as object.
2. To mention or speak of (a single person or thing).
3. To mention separately or in order (a number or set of
things); to give a list or catalogue of; to enumerate, list. In
later use passing into sense.
4. To relate, report, or describe; to give an account or
detailed description of.
• Maggie’s “incident” is a contested site of memory:

“Remember Maggie? The day she fell down and those gar girls laughed at her?”
Roberta looked up from her salad and stared at me. “Maggie didn’t fall,” she
said/
”Yes, she did. You remember.”
“No, Twyla. They knocked her down. Those girls pushed her down and tore her
clothes. In the orchard.”
“I don’t—That’s not what happened.”
”Sure it is. In the orchard. Remember how scared we were?”
Wait a minute. I don’t remember any of that.” (25)
“Are you sure about Maggie?”
“Of course I’m sure. You’ve blocked it, Twyla. It happened.
Those girls had behaviour problems, you know.”
“Didn’t they, though. But why can’t I remember the Maggie
thing?”
• Recitatif -> as the failure to recite, account for, memory
• The narrative repetition at the beginning (mention of gym, F’s,
dead parents) creates a narrative and structural contradiction that
has residual effects on the story
• Despite the initial repetition early on in the story, which may
cause doubt in the reader AND/OR cause us to think, “yes, I
know that,” which creates a certainty of fact -> this certainty is
troubled by Twlya’s own inability to account for her own
memories:

“Roberta had messed up my past somehow with that business

about Maggie. I wouldn’t forget a thing like that. Would I?” (28)
• Our own trust of Twyla’s account is now troubled
• Twyla convinces herself of Roberta’s truth:

“What I remember was the kiddie hat, and the semicircle legs. I tried to
reassure myself about the race thing for a long time until it dawned on me
the truth was already there, and Roberta knew it. I didn’t kick her; I didn’t
join in with the gar girls and kick that lady, but I sure did want to. We
watched and never tried to help her and never called for help. Maggie was
my dancing mother. Deaf, I thought, and dumb. Nobody inside. Nobody
who would hear you if you cried in the night. Nobody who could tell you
anything important that you could use. Rocking, dancing, swaying as she
walked. And when the gar girls pushed her down, and started
roughhousing, I knew she wouldn’t scream, couldn’t just like me and I was
glad about that.
“What I remember was the kiddie hat, and the semicircle legs. I tried to reassure myself
about the race thing for a long time until it dawned on me the truth was already there,
and Roberta knew it. I didn’t kick her; I didn’t join in with the gar girls and kick that
lady, but I sure did want to. We watched and never tried to help her and never called for
help. Maggie was my dancing mother. Deaf, I thought, and dumb. Nobody inside.
Nobody who would hear you if you cried in the night. Nobody who could tell you
anything important that you could use. Rocking, dancing, swaying as she walked. And
when the gar girls pushed her down, and started roughhousing, I knew she wouldn’t
scream, couldn’t just like me and I was glad about that.

• Change of memory
• Twyla identifies Maggie with her mother
• Hatred for the mother (but also hatred, possibly, for herself) -> is this a racialized self-
loathing? Does she see something in Maggie that she hates that she sees in herself?
• Maggie becomes “nobody” merely a figure for movement, inaudibility, helplessness;
she is a symbol of despair that Twyla, in this account, wants to kick down and destroy
BUT THEN:

“Listen to me. I really did think she was black. I didn’t make that up. I really
thought so. But now I can’t be sure. I just remember has as old, so old. And
she couldn’t talk—well, you know, I thought she was crazy. She’d been
brought up in an institution like my mother was and like I thought I would
be too. And you were right. We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls. Only
them. But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did
it, too. You and me, but that’s not true. And I don’t want you to carry that
around. It was just that I wanted to do it so bad that day—wanting to is
doing it.”
Her eyes were watery from the drinks she’d had, I guess. I know it’s that
way with me. One glass of wine and I start bawling over the littlest thing.
“We were kids, Roberta.” (39)
BUT THEN:

“Listen to me. I really did think she was black. I didn’t make that up. I really thought so. But
now I can’t be sure. I just remember has as old, so old. And she couldn’t talk—well, you know,
I thought she was crazy. She’d been brought up in an institution like my mother was and like I
thought I would be too. And you were right. We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls. Only them.
But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did it, too. You and me, but
that’s not true. And I don’t want you to carry that around. It was just that I wanted to do it so
bad that day—wanting to is doing it.”
Her eyes were watery from the drinks she’d had, I guess. I know it’s that way with me.
One glass of wine and I start bawling over the littlest thing.
“We were kids, Roberta.” (39)

• The narrative voice intervenes and tries to push the memory away again (it was the drinks, it’s
“the littlest thing.”
• This back and forth as to what happened with Maggie, and what race she was, mirrors the
reader’s experience of doubt and confusion
 “Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit.
What the hell happened to Maggie?”