Exploring the idea of racial stereotypes. Also exploring the idea that we hold certain traits comment to certain races and ethnic backgrounds. Taking into account the era’s and Life changing events that took place during those times that take place in this story, we see the shifting around of what we thought we knew.
Twyla is our narrator. So we open with the view that she may be black, as the author is black. And her name is less traditional and Roberta’s.
“My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick. “
“Every now and then she would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important and one of those things she said was that they never wash their hair and they smelled funny. “
“Twyla, this is Roberta. “
“My mother won’t like you putting me in here. “ - Twyla about rooming with a girl from another race.
“ so for the moment it didn’t matter that we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that’s what the other kids called us sometimes. “ defining the difference and contrast physically yet they are the same in almost every other way emotionally. (1174)
Here we see how different their upbringing was with their mothers.
“I saw Mary right away. She had on those green slacks I hated it hated even more now because didn’t she know we were going to chapel? And that for jacket with the pocket lining 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.” Her dance her mother. Her mother was very affectionate with her when they greeted she held and smiled at her daughter. But she asked foolishly and emotionally at the rude greeting of Roberta’s mother. (1176)
“I looked up it seemed for miles. She was big. Bigger than any man and on her chest was the biggest cross eyed ever seen. I swear it was 6 inches long each way. And in the crook of her arm was the biggest Bible ever made. “ Roberta’s sock mother. She offered a cold reading to Twyla’s mother Mary. That Mary did not receive very well. Or gracefully. (1177)
“She was sitting in a booth smoking a cigarette with two guys smothered in head and facial hair. Her own hair was so big in wild I could hardly see her face. But the eyes. I would know them anywhere. She had on 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.” When Twyla sees Roberta again. Is Roberta black? Her hair is so big? Her mother so religious? Twyla is a waitress, is she white? her mother is a dancer, is she “trailer trash”? (1178). Are these two ideas that different at all? I think that is what the author is trying to say.
Twyla marries James- (1179)
“Waiting in the checkout line I heard a voice say, “Twyla! “. The classical music piped over the aisles had affected me and the woman leaning toward me was dressed to kill. Diamonds on her hand, a smart white summer dress.” (1180) they meet again.
“But she was waiting for me and her huge hair was slick now, smooth around the smell, nicely shaped head. Shoes, dress, everything lovely and summary and rich. I was dying to know what happened to her, how she got from Jimi Hendrix to Annandale, a neighborhood full of doctors and IBM executives. “ Did Twyla not thing she could make it in life? Is Roberta white with her hair straight and her clothes so rich in a nice neighborhood? Roberta even had two servants (1182). In those days, could she if she was black?
Roberto was against integrating the schools. She was a step mother of four children. Her husband a widower. “And who do you suppose was in line, big as life, holding a sign in front of her bigger than her mother is Cross? Mothers have rights to! it said.” - is Roberta white? Or does she hate the white people who have oppressed her race for generations (as per the argument those days)? Was Twila change for the better by her interaction with her “black friend” from childhood? Is that why she doesn’t care about her child going to school with other children that are other races?
Over all the examples and arguments for or against which girl is black and which is white is both pointless and the point at the same time. Morrison wanted the audience to face their preconceptions and biases. Her work is a stroke of genius. And her knack for storytelling and engulfing the reader in her work is almost unmatched in modernist literature.
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