Summary

The narrator of Recitatif is a woman named Twyla who recalls her stay at an orphanage when she was eight years old. The story traces Twyla's encounters with her roommate, Roberta, at St. Bonaventure orphanage over the course of twenty years. In the story's opening, the narrator explains that she has been placed in the orphanage because her mother dances all night. Roberta has been placed there because her mother is sick. Twyla says that St. Bonny's was not so bad. Other shelters, like Bellevue for instance, house hundreds of children in one large room. St. Bonny's housed four children to a room. At the time that Twyla and Roberta stay there, there is a shortage of state kids so they are the only two in their room. For the four months that the two girls stay at St. Bonny's they...