I really enjoyed this story (Recitatif) and it's rugged way of conveying a racial, betrayful, friendship that is so very well ellaborated on. The one girl's mother is obviously a stipper or something of that nature (in my eyes) due to how she is always said to be "dancing". And on the other hand, you have a girl who's mother is ill and can't take care of her daughter. They both (the two little girls) meet in this orphanage (one white, one black) and become great pals. They eventually get out of the orphanage and have lives of their own and meet back up with another by chance on several occasions, and each occasion is highly contrasted from one another. That side of things conveys that people change, maybe for the better or maybe for the worst. The two girls, as women, went through different scenarios of life and had bitter actions and attitudes toward one another.
But, in the end they ultimately got back to relating about their time in the orphanage together and talked on one another's mother's and realized that their mom's never got well; one being terminally ill and one that just enjoyed "dancing". They both resented their mother's and it came clear that they did when it was evident that the woman, in the story who made the meals, was sought upon by the girls as having the qualities that they hated about their mother's who abandoned them, more or less.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Zgu2hrs2k
I'm glad that you touched on the resentment the girls felt towards their mothers and how it related to Maggie. We didn't spend much time talking about Maggie or what she represented to the girls in class. Even though the girls did not join in when Maggie was being harassed, they wanted to. To me, it seems that they want to hurt Maggie the way that they wanted to but could not hurt their mothers. Instead they continue to love their mothers and project their resentment and hostility onto Maggie. At the end of the story Roberta and Twyla touch on the fact that one mother never got well and the other never stopped dancing but neither of them know what happened to Maggie. This shows that they both are still affected by the things that happened to them as children.
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