I absolutely adore Toni Morrison’s works and have read most of her oeuvre but somehow missed her sole short story, “Recitatif.” This edition has a lovely forty-page introduction by Zadie Smith who analyzes and helps readers grasp the story.

At its heart, “Recitatif” is about two eight-year-old girls, Twyla and Roberta, who are placed in a state home and share a room. Despite their initial prejudices against rooming with someone of a “whole other race,” they become friends. Their lives intersect four more times during their lives. What is intriguing is that Morrison deliberately avoids assigning a specific “race” to either girl, so the reader is always left wondering which is which—and does it matter if the black girl or the white girl has the mother who “dances all night” or the mother who is sick? Morrison walks a tight rope balancing the language so that it’s never clear from the dialogue or other clues.

A disabled woman, Maggie, shifts into the background though she’s the most important character. Readers get so involved in solving the mystery of which girl is black and which is white that they lose track of Maggie and her role in their lives. A disabled woman, she is a scapegoat for the older girls at the home and treated abysmally. As Twyla and Roberta revisit—and revise—their past, they have conflicting memories of Maggie, including her race and their part in a scene where Maggie falls, but no one helps her.

Toni Morrison forces readers to examine ourselves and our racial stereotypes in a profound way in this superb short story. As the mother of a Black son, I found it particularly intriguing and very moving.

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“Recitatif” (Knopf, February 1, 2022) is available through:

Your local independent bookseller    |    Amazon    |    Barnes & Noble

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