Friday, February 25, 2022

Black or White?


Toni Morrison's one and only short story that was published in  An Anthology of African-American Women CONFIRMATION by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Amina Baraka (1983) is now a book on its own entitled Recitatif It is an intriguing story about two eight-year-old girls who spent four months together at St. Bonaventure shelter. There, Twyla and Roberta—one who is African American and the other white and from different backgrounds—get to know one another. What Morrison does so cleverly in her story is that she never lets the reader know which child is black and which girl is white.

What enhances the book is the introduction by Zadie Smith.