Издания и произведения

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…

Toni Morrison's only published short story. It was first published in 1983 in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, an anthology edited by Amiri Baraka and his wife Amina Baraka. Twyla and Roberta first meet within the confines of a state home for children, St. Bonny's, because each has been taken away from her mother. Roberta's mother is sick; Twyla's mother "just likes to dance all night." The girls look different from one another: one is black, one is white, although we aren't told which is which. Despite their initially hostile feelings, they are drawn together because of their similar circumstances.