I need two comments for these discussions attached

 I need two comments for these discussions attached

Discussion1: 1 coment

Discussion 2: 1 coment 

DISCUSSION 1

Twyla and Roberta are two friends who met in a house where their mothers left them, both have similar circumstances, the funny thing is that neither of them knows the real reason why they were left there. One of the girls is black and the other is white, but the reader does not know who is the one throughout the story. The girls become bunas amigas and live laughing from Maggie’s legs “legs like parentheses.” One Easter day the mothers of both go to visit them, Mary, Twyla’s mother who wore pants tight for her work that is “dancing all night” shakes the hand of Roberta’s mother, who is a very religious lady. Twyla is very frustrated by her mother.

The first to leave the house is Roberta promising that they would see each other again soon which did not happen. 8 years later they meet by chance in Twyla’s work, but the encounter was not the most pleasant since Twyla sees a very different attitude in Roberta. Years later, both are achieved again in a supermarket and talk about their marriages and children. They remember Maggie at this meeting.

The fourth meeting is one of the most exciting. Twyla was arriving at the school where his son Joseph would go and sees some women outside the school among those women was Roberta who did not treat her very well, in fact one of the women who was there threw a stone in Twyla’s car, in this situation I perceive that the Twyla is white and Roberta is black because normally such protests are black people defending their rights.  “What are you doing?” “Picketing. What’s it looks like?” “What for?” “What do you mean, ‘What for?’ They want to take my kids and send them out of the neighborhood. They don’t want to go.” “So, what if they go to another school? My boy’s being bussed too, and I don’t mind. Why should you?” “It’s not about us, Twyla. Me and you. It’s about our kids.” “What’s more us than that?” “Well, it’s a free country.”. This last answer is a phrase widely used by black people. The otherness is greatly reflected is this story as the two protagonists basically struggle with each other to see that one has more than the other. The situation is most accentuated by being one black and the other white.

In my opinion this originated from the second meeting when Twyla worked as a server and sees Roberta in that state or category. In the first meeting both did not have enough maturity to understand about social classes, but if they perceived it through the encounter with their mothers.

DISCUSSION 2

The story begins with Twyla, the main protagonist of the story, narrating her anecdote with being taken to the orphanage because her mother works long shifts as a dancer. Morrison’s objective in the story is to make the readers try to guess and analyze what the skin color of each of the two mayor protagonists of the reading, Twyla and Roberta, is. Closely looking at the stereotypes the writer shows, the reader despite her outstanding way to hide the two main characters racial identities, can understand and highlights contexts and backgrounds related to the races of both White and African Americans in today’s culture. Twyla and Roberta skin color seems hidden as you can tell along the story, but Morrison wisely starts dropping some hits for us, the reader and deeply analyzers, to dig in and find it out for ourselves. In the writing she says, “we looked like salt and pepper standing there” making the readers feel already confused on which of the two is black and white. She also displays some racism when she talks about how ignored they felt when they were dropped there, “we were dumped. Even the New York City Puerto Ricans and the upstate Indians ignored us.” This tells that even though one them was for sure white, this one was also feeling no accepted in that place. One thing that makes you start noticing the protagonists’ s races was when Twyla seemed to enjoy the orphanage’s cooking while Roberta did not, indicating that perhaps let’s say Twyla is from a poorer social status; so, therefore, people would think she is black and would eat anything while Roberta is thought to be white because she is from a higher class. Morrison despite of doing a great job on avoiding idea of racial identities of Twyla and Roberta in Recitatif, she frees another hit when the two mothers met each other. According to her, the two parents had their different descriptions. Mary is described as beautiful by her daughter Twyla, “even in those ugly green slackers.” This could clue that Mary is indeed while Roberta’s mother as “bigger than any man.” Might mean that she is an African American woman. Nowadays, African American are believed to have larger shapes, evidenced by Roberta’s mother’s description according to Twyla. Another clear hit indicating that Roberta is black may seem racist to some, including me of course, it is when Twyla said that her mother told her “they never washed their hair and they smelled funny”. Furthermore, before the two would separate, Morrison gave another hint and I think it is the most important is at their dialogued they had, and this comment pops up “and what am I? Swiss Cheese? I used to curl your hair. I hated your hands in my hair” Taking a closer look on the phrase ‘Swiss Cheese’ as a joke, referencing Twyla’s skin complexion as white while Roberta evoked when she curled Twyla’s hair, another stereotype for black people to have dreadlocks after curling their hair. The concept of Otherness in the writing is seeing when they both start describing Maggie which is not a main character by any means in the story, in fact, she is sometimes brought up to the story as an extra. She is so unsympathetic described by them as an old and sandy colored kitchen woman who according to their descriptions her legs looked like parentheses. They insulted a lot Maggie while describing her, and a good proof to this is when they said she wore a little hat what they called stupid, a kid’s hat with ear flaps. They also said she wasn’t much taller than they were. I can’t understand why they get to demean her this way when she has not done anything wrong against them, in fact, Maggie is one those people who keeps to themselves. After having read the story, I can tell that Maggie was perhaps a way to visualize and get in context the idea of otherness