Recitatif characters

Appears from the start

The story's narrator, first seen at eight years old when she is placed at St. Bonny's because her mother cannot reliably care for her. She is uneasy about sharing a room with Roberta, whose race differs from hers, though the story never identifies which girl is Black and which is white. Their repeated encounters across adulthood expose how memory, class, and racial conflict reshape the meaning each assigns to their childhood.

Appears from the start

Twyla's roommate at St. Bonny's, also eight when they meet. Her mother is ill, while Twyla's is neglectful, and the girls form a bond despite initial mistrust. Roberta later moves through social worlds very different from Twyla's. Her shifting recollections of an incident involving Maggie drive the story's central uncertainty about guilt and memory.

Appears from the start

Twyla's mother, whose habit of staying out dancing leaves her daughter temporarily at St. Bonny's. Attractive and casually dressed, she visits at Easter but behaves in a way that embarrasses Twyla, particularly during an uncomfortable meeting with Roberta's mother.

Appears from the start

Roberta's unnamed mother, a physically imposing and deeply religious woman who visits St. Bonny's carrying a Bible and food. She refuses Mary's offered hand, an encounter that both children remember. Her illness is the reason Roberta lives at the shelter.

Appears from the start

A mute kitchen worker at St. Bonny's with an unusual gait. The children regard her as vulnerable and strange. Twyla and Roberta witness her fall in the orchard near a group of older girls, but their later accounts disagree over Maggie's race, whether she was deliberately attacked, and what they themselves did or wished to do.

Also known as Big Bozo

Appears from the start

A staff member at St. Bonny's who assigns Twyla and Roberta to share a room. The children privately call her Big Bozo and resent her authority, but she also tries to guide them through the institution's routines and their mothers' Easter visit.

Appears from the start

Twyla's husband in adulthood, a stable local man from a long-established family. He works as a fireman, and he and Twyla raise a son in Newburgh. His settled life contrasts with the disruptions in Twyla's encounters with Roberta.

Appears from the start

Roberta's wealthy husband, an executive and widower with four children. His circumstances place Roberta among the affluent newcomers around Newburgh and sharpen the economic difference between her life and Twyla's when the women meet again.