Recitatif : a story /
Toni Morrison ; with an introduction by Zadie Smith.
- [First edition].
- xliii, 39 pages ; 19 cm
"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 "This is a Borzoi book"--Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references.
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.
9780593315033 0593315030
Random House Inc, Attn Order Entry 400 Hahn rd, Westminster, MD, USA, 21157 SAN 201-3975
2021944118
GBC234622 bnb
020500572 Uk
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.