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Recitatif a story

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 fin...

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Main Author: Morrison, Toni (Author)
Other Authors: Smith, Zadie (Narrator)
Format: Audiobooks eAudiobook Downloads eAudiobook
Language: English
Published: New York : Random House Audio, 2022.
Edition: Unabridged.
Subjects:
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.
United States > Race relations > Fiction.
Short stories.
Downloadable audio books.
Online Access: Go to Downloadable Audiobook Here.
Summary: 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 races ambiguous throughout the story. Morrison herself described Recitatif, a story which will keep readers thinking and discussing for years to come, 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." We know that one is white and one is Black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? A remarkable look into what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, and how perceptions are made tangible by reality, Recitatif is a gift to readers in these changing times.
Item Description: Unabridged.
Physical Description: 1 online resource (2 audio files) : digital
Playing Time: 01::5:4:
Format: Requires OverDrive Listen (file size: N/A KB) or OverDrive app (file size: 53464 KB).
ISBN: 9780593460580
Author Notes: Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio on February 18, 1931. She received a B.A. in English from Howard University in 1953 and a master's degree in English from Cornell University in 1955 with her thesis on the theme of suicide in modern literature. She taught at several universities including Texas Southern University, Howard University, and Princeton University.

Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Her other works include Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, Home, and God Help the Child. She has won several awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon in 1977, the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved in 1988, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, the Edward MacDowell Medal for her outstanding contribution to American culture in 2016, and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. She also co-wrote children's books with her son, Slade Morrison, including The Big Box, The Book of Mean People, and Peeny Butter Fudge.

Toni Morrison passed away on August 5, 2019 at the age of 88, after a short illness.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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