Establishing Character Through Relationship: Friendship
(about 1.5 pages)
Gail Caldwell, Let’s Take the Long Way Home (excerpt)
- Caldwell’s book has been called a “memorial memoir.” What does that term suggest? Why does Caldwell begin Chapter 1 with the sentence below? How does this narrative reveal the nature of grief?
- “I can still see her standing on the shore, a towel around her neck and a post-workout cigarette in her hand—half Gidget and half splendid splinter, her rower’s arms in defiant contrast to the awful pink bathing suit she’d found somewhere.”
- Comment on the role of photography in this excerpt. Consider the quote below. What’s the image it refers to? What other images appear in this text?
- “I discovered this image the year after she died, and it has always seemed like a clue in a painting—a secret garden revealed only after it is gone.”
- This work has been called a meditation on the nature of friendship. Select a few quotes that comment on the way friendships form and the importance of friendship.
Toni Morrison, “Recitatif”
- Why does the story begin in St. Bonaventure’s home, rather than in the individual backstories of Twyla and Roberta? What attracts them to each other as friends? What does the story suggest about the nature of friendship?
- Morrison viewed this story as “an experiment in the removal of racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” How did her experimental style affect your reading/interpretation of this piece? What do you have to learn as a writer from her approach in this story?
- Why does the story end with a question?
Attributions of Quotes:
Caldwell, Gail. Chapter 1 in Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011. © Gail Caldwell. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our Creative Commons license. For more information, see https://ocw.mit.edu/help/faq-fair-use/.
Morrison, Toni. Recitatif: A Story. Alfred A. Knopf, 2024. © Toni Morrison. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our Creative Commons license. For more information, see https://ocw.mit.edu/help/faq-fair-use/.
