Research Catalog

Title

Recitatif : a story / Toni Morrison ; with an introduction by Zadie Smith.

Author

Morrison, Toni

Publication

• New York ; Toronto : Alfred A. Knopf, [2022]
• ©2022

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Smith, Zadie

Description

xliii, 39 pages; 19 cm

Summary

A beautiful, arresting short story by Toni Morrison--the only one she ever wrote--about race and the relationships that shape us through life, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four moths together as roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable at the time, they lose touch as they grow older, only to find each other later at a diner, then at a grocery store, and against at a protest. Seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, and in disagreement each time they meet, the two women still cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Written in 1980 and anthologized in a number of collections, this is the first time Recitatif is being published as a stand-alone hardcover. In the story, Twyla's and Roberta's races remain ambitious. We know that one is white and one is black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the women the girls tormented at the orphanage? Morrison herself described this story 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." Recitatif is a remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and about how perceptions are made tangible by reality. --

Subject

• African American women > Fiction
• Women, White > Fiction
• African Americans > Race identity > Fiction
• White people > Race identity > Fiction
• Interpersonal relations > Fiction
• Interracial friendship > Fiction
• Female friendship > Fiction
• African American women
• African Americans > Race identity
• Female friendship
• Interpersonal relations
• Interracial friendship
• Race relations
• Women, White
• United States > Race relations > Fiction
• United States

Genre/Form

• Fiction.
• Short stories.
• Novellas.

Note

• "Originally collected in Confirmation : an anthology of African-American women, edited by Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka, published by William Morrow & Company, New York, in 1983"--Title page verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Call Number

Sc C 22-92

ISBN

• 9780593315033
• 0593315030

LCCN

2021944118

OCLC

1292021288

Author

Morrison, Toni, author.

Title

Recitatif : a story / Toni Morrison ; with an introduction by Zadie Smith.

Publisher

New York ; Toronto : Alfred A. Knopf, [2022]

Copyright Date

©2022

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Added Author

Smith, Zadie, writer of introduction.

Research Call Number

Sc C 22-92

JFC 22-28