Problem
From your own knowledge of any relevant contextual facts or circumstances-or from information provided by your instructor, textbook, or the introduction to this workshop-identify and list any potentially significant contexts for the passage. Respond to this prompt with a list of contexts. Each contextualization should include the phrase: " ... is potentially significant."
Having spent the previous steps looking only at Morrison's literary language, we are now asking you to look outside of the text for potentially significant interpretive contexts-that is, facts or broader circumstances external to the story that are important to its production, reception, or understanding. In forcing you to contextualize, we again only ask for potentially significant literary, biographical, political, or historical information. How might Morrison's biography inform or inflect "Recitatif"? Does the story seem to address-directly or indirectly-any contemporaneous historical or political events? While this is an ideal time to look up additional information about the story or its author, please don't get bogged down. As with the previous step, such contextual elements may prove important or incidental to your final interpretation of "Recitatif."
"We both giggled. Really giggled. Suddenly, in just a pulse beat, twenty years disappeared and all of it came rushing back. The big girls (whom we called gar girls-Roberta's misheard word for the evil stone faces described in a civics class) there dancing in the orchard, the ploppy mashed potatoes, the double weenies, the Spam with pineapple. We went into the coffee shop holding on to one another and I tried to think why we were glad to see each other this time and not before. Once, twelve years ago, we passed like strangers. A black girl and a white girl meeting in a Howard Johnson's on the road and having nothing to say. One in a blue and white triangle waitress hat-the other on her way to see Hendrix. Now we were behaving like sisters separated for much too long. Those four short months were nothing in time. Maybe it was the thing itself. Just being there, together. Two little girls who knew what nobody else in the world knew-how not to ask questions. How to believe what had to be believed. There was politeness in that reluctance and generosity as well. Is your mother sick too? No, she dances all night. Oh-and an understanding nod".