What Happened To Maggie? Alexander Potako College

The question of racial issues is a serious challenge even in the modern society as the norms and values which were created many centuries ago are not as easy to overcome as it could be. Toni Morrison in her work Recitatif depicts how two girls from completely different social groups become friends in the shelter but how their confrontation appears later in adulthood. Generally speaking, this short story shows how the perception of reality may be reshaped because of the racial prejudice and how cruelty appears because of the violence everyone faces during his life.

To begin with, the story itself should be summarized in order to understand the plot. Two girls, Roberta and Twyla, were brought to the shelter because their mothers could not take care of them. The beginning of the story itself shows this, “My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick” (Morrison 1). Twyla, the heroine which tells the story, mentions that they both started to communicate because they were outsiders in some way, and got bad marks for all the subjects. The story shows the particular misunderstanding between both friends when Roberta’s mother, seeing that Twyla and her mother are African Americans, refused to shake her mother’s hand. The story...