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Summary
Summary
A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Toni Morrison.
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 masterful 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.
Author Notes
Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio on February 18, 1931. She received a B.A. in English from Howard University in 1953 and a master's degree in English from Cornell University in 1955 with her thesis on the theme of suicide in modern literature. She taught at several universities including Texas Southern University, Howard University, and Princeton University.
Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Her other works include Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, Home, and God Help the Child. She has won several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon in 1977, the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1988, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the Edward MacDowell Medal for her outstanding contribution to American culture in 2016, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. She also co-wrote children's books with her son, Slade Morrison, including The Big Box, The Book of Mean People, and Peeny Butter Fudge.
Toni Morrison passed away on August 5, 2019 at the age of 88, after a short illness.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Originally published in 1983, this stunning work from Nobel laureate Morrison (God Help the Child) follows two women who share a tenuous bond after meeting at an orphanage at eight in the 1950s. As Zadie Smith notes in an illuminating introduction, Morrison (1931--2019) chose not to reveal the race of either character, just that one is Black and one is white. Twyla and Roberta connect over a shared sense of rejection after their single mothers were unable to take care of them. Morrison then jumps forward to the late '60s with Twyla as a young woman working at a Howard Johnson's near Kingston, N.Y., where Roberta comes in with a musician boyfriend who supposedly has an "appointment" with Jimi Hendrix. During their awkward exchange, she mocks Twyla for not knowing who Hendrix is. Twelve years later, Twyla is married and living in segregated Newburgh, where she again sees Roberta while shopping at an upscale grocery store. Roberta now lives across the river in fancy Annandale, and she insists Twyla join her for coffee, then brings up a violent incident from the orphanage. Eventually, she accuses Twyla of committing an act of racial violence. The author's experiment pays off brilliantly, forcing the reader to consider racial stereotypes while also providing an indelible story. The gravitas and unparalleled skill found in Morrison's best-known work is on full display in this compact powerhouse. (Feb.)
Kirkus Review
The only short story ever written by the Nobel Prize--winning Morrison is also a thought experiment, illuminated here by Zadie Smith's close analysis of equal length. Twyla and Roberta are both 8 years old when they meet at a New York state institution where they are briefly housed--because, as Twyla tells us in the first sentence, "My mother danced all night and [Roberta's] was sick." They connect immediately despite the fact that "we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that's what the other kids called us sometimes." The girls run into each other several times later in life but never recapture their childhood connection. Among the wedges between them are their differing memories of an incident they witnessed involving a bow-legged "kitchen woman" named Maggie. Now, listen up: If you only remember one thing about this review, remember to skip over the 50-page introduction and read the 50-page story first. Just as students read the text before they hear the lecture, Smith's exegesis is much more meaningful if you know the story. If you read the intro first, you forfeit the ability to apprehend the story on your own, more critical than usual here since the issue goes beyond spoilers. According to Morrison herself, this story is "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." And as Smith adds, the "subject of the experiment is the reader." On every page, Morrison teases said reader with details about the girls, their mothers, and their lots in life that seem like they could help solve the puzzle of which is Black and which is White, yet they never conclusively do so. And as the story is designed to show and Smith will make sure you see, that is not the most important thing. A uniquely interesting and enlightening reading experience. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
"Recitatif" is Morrison's sole short story. Originally published in an anthology in 1983, it resurfaced in Glory Edim's On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library (2021), and now stands resoundingly on its own. As with all the Nobel laureate's work, "Recitatif" is endlessly ponderable. The title is French for recitative--"a rhythmically free vocal style that imitates the natural inflections of speech," and a key to Morrison's shrewdly precise dialogue. The story begins when two abandoned eight-year-old girls, Twlya and Roberta, meet in a shelter. One is white, one is Black; but we're left guessing about their racial identities, an exercise that reveals just how thoroughly programmed our racial perceptions are. In her substantial and enlightening introduction, Zadie Smith quotes Morrison, whom she describes as "the great master of American complexity," explaining that this tale is "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes." Class is also a sharp divide, especially when Twyla and Roberta reconnect as mothers living very different lives in a gentrifying Hudson River town and vehemently at odds over school busing. This is a profound and foundation-rocking conundrum of a -story.
Library Journal Review
The only short story Nobel laureate Morrison ever wrote, "Recitatif" concerns Twyla and Roberta, friends in childhood, who lost touch as adults but keep encountering each other at places like a grocery store, a diner, and a protest march. One is white, one is black, but readers don't know which is which, Morrison having aimed to craft "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial." Bearing an introduction by Zadie Smith, this is the story's first-time appearance as a stand-alone. When Verdelle published the Good Negress in 1995, she won early praise from Morrison. The novel went on to claim the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award and PEN/Faulkner finalist honors, but Verdelle's next novel--a Western featuring Black characters--has languished. Nevertheless, the novel led to a friendship with Morrison, detailed here along with Verdelle's early struggles to write and thoughts on what it means to be considered a writer with promise, still struggling. Originally scheduled for September 2021.
