"Bloodchild" and "Recitatif"

In “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison, and “Bloodchild” by Octivia Butler, both authors address issues of motherhood, parental roles, and racial ambiguity. Toni Morrison’s piece has been noted for her intentional removal of all clues to the racial identity of its characters, though race is a key issue. In “Bloodchild”, they do not directly allude to the physical traits of the characters very often as well; they are assigned gender but not much else. Only the man who almost dies being eaten alive by the host grubs is given a non-gender physical trait; he has brown skin according to the author, which is left further undefined. Only in the ending arguments about the host-egg laying system are more explicitly racist topics hinted at; a history of being oppressed and enslaved on their home world, and are they being treated better here? In Toni Morrison’s piece, her lack of gender identities is a persistent and intentional device- it is meant to force the reader to recognize what non-physical traits they have imbedded into racial stereotypes.

Both pieces also deal actively with the issues surrounding motherhood. In “Bloodchild”, the mother-creatures of the insectoide like race mate briefly with males, who only serve to father offspring; then they die and are not even part of the child rearing society. The mothers of this race are then forced to have their larvae grow inside the body of a host human. In “Recitatif”, both girls do not have active father figures; their mothers play the only parental role in their life. Strangely, like “Bloodchild”, the girls are raised by someone else, in the belly of the social services system- although there is not the symbolism of the girls taken and eating away at their host, but rather the host tainting them, and leaving them troubled and on a path to self-destruction like the older girls.