Recitatif

I'm not sure what could be said about this short story that hasn't already been said in depth already. My voice is just another in the vast praise for this masterpiece of a thought experiment. It is decidedly 5 stars for me. The way Morrison constructed such a concise yet thought provoking story was superb. I know the story was a thought experiment about race and stereotype perception, and that there is no "correct" answer about which woman was white and which was black, but I still couldn't help hyper focusing on intricate details to parse out the "real" answer, which I suppose was the point. I also found the introduction by Zadie Smith to be wonderfully insightful and an great way to prepare the reader for the story. Though it 'spoiled' many of the story beats, I found that it primed me for a more thorough analysis. I'm embarrassed to say this is my first Toni Morrison, but it will not be my last.

This is a fairly fascinating short story (and the only one) written by Toni Morrison. After Beloved, I told myself I wasn’t going to read more Toni Morrison—she is a great writer, but just not for me. However, when I saw the premise of this short story, I couldn’t resist. A philosophical thought experiment in the form of a story, this work tells the tale of two orphaned girls—from similar beginnings, yet vitally different by virtue of their skin color. The story takes and indeed demands its reader to be reflective and wonder what our perceptions of the two main characters, Twyla and Roberta, reveal about our own biases.

Perhaps it is because I already knew the conceit going in, or that this is a short story and therefore much more concrete, but this was a far easier work to swallow than Beloved and even The Bluest Eye. Still, the ‘story’ was far less interesting than the philosophical themes presented through it. The narrative is choppy and highlights a few events, and offers tantalizing details of the characters—perhaps this is what will seal their race, it winks—without ever giving a definite answer. Going in, I had zero expectations, and indeed my ‘predictions’ of the characters’ races flip-flopped through the story. What does that say about me? I’m not sure, but as someone not a part of the mostly binary white–black divide in the US, it sure was a fun thought experiment.

Since it’s short, it’s worth the half hour or hour it takes to read. The introduction by Zadie Smith in this edition was also quite a good read—though make sure to read it after the short story, and not before. So says Smith:

‘If it is a humanism, it is a radical one, which struggles toward solidarity in alterity, the possibility and promise of unity across difference. When applied to racial matters, it recognizes that although the category of race is both experientially and structurally “real,” it yet has no ultimate or essential reality in and of itself.’
‘Life is complex, conceptually dominated by binaries but never wholly contained by them.’