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.
