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Overview
Published as part of the collection Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women in 1983, "Recitatif" is the only short story composed by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison
. The story is a fictional account of two girls who meet at a children’s shelter and their subsequent encounters throughout their lives. Morrison intentionally omits the girls’ respective races, only indicating that one is white and one is Black. By obscuring the girls’ races, Morrison asks readers to explore their unconscious biases surrounding racial stereotypes and assumptions.Read the full book summary, an in-depth character description of Twyla, and explanations of important quotes from "Recitatif."
