INITIATION, RACE RELATIONS AND OTHERNESS IN TONI MORRISON’S “RECITATIF”

The moments of change marking transformation from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience and gaining knowledge about the self and the world in general have been seen as of significance across cultures. Correspondingly, literature, art in general, has engaged closely with this ritualistic, threshold experience. Foregrounding a moment of change and centering its plot around at least one young adolescent or child, initiation stories, or more commonly known as stories of coming of age, narrativize the theme of growing up or at least one, major character’s realization of a truth about him/herself as well as the life and the world condition. Despite the prevalence of initiation theme in literature and the significant attempts made by literary studies scholars to theorize what constitutes an initiation story especially until a few decades ago, more recent scholarship, Anglophone literary studies at least, has dealt less considerably with initiation as a frame of reference in the analysis and interpretation of literary texts. The present study reconsiders the theme of initiation in literature through Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” and examines how the short story deviates from the patterns of traditional (female) initiation stories. It is argued that Morrison interestingly brings together the issue of initiation with concepts such as race relations and otherness, which calls for a more dynamic, relational and intersubjective understanding of the term.