Recitatif: A Story
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner—for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith
“A puzzle of a story, then—a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ‘experiment’ she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader.” —Zadie Smith, award-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth
In this 1983 short story—the only short story Morrison ever wrote—we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
Another work of genius by this masterly writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage?
A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times.
“A puzzle of a story, then—a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ‘experiment’ she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader.” —Zadie Smith, award-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth
In this 1983 short story—the only short story Morrison ever wrote—we meet Twyla and Roberta, who have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four months together as roommates in St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only later to find each other again at a diner, a grocery store, and again at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and at each other's throats each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them.
Another work of genius by this masterly writer, Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, as "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage?
A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times.
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Community Reviews
** Read the story before you read the introduction by Zadie Smith! The Introduction is fantastic but only if you have any idea what she's talking about it. Especially since it's the same length as the story itself.
Really interesting and the connection between the two women is still powerful despite the distraction of the trick of not knowing which one is white or black. I read it twice switching the races of the characters though I know it's a fool's errand because Morrison made both characters to purposefully transcend the question. And so we're left to decide who are these people, regardless of their race, which is great. I am left feeling that Roberta's mother is the less generous one, and Roberta herself is less generous, as she is the one opposing school bussing, but that both characters have a mean little corner of their soul when it comes to Maggie.
Really interesting and the connection between the two women is still powerful despite the distraction of the trick of not knowing which one is white or black. I read it twice switching the races of the characters though I know it's a fool's errand because Morrison made both characters to purposefully transcend the question. And so we're left to decide who are these people, regardless of their race, which is great. I am left feeling that Roberta's mother is the less generous one, and Roberta herself is less generous, as she is the one opposing school bussing, but that both characters have a mean little corner of their soul when it comes to Maggie.
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