Genevieve
I listened to the audiobook of Recitatif by Toni Morrison on Libby, and wow! This was such a smart idea. Knowing that she wrote this as a social experiment made me want to read it even more.
She intentionally leaves out any clear racial identifiers and puts it all on us as the reader.
The whole story is really about the fact that she never tells us the race of the two main characters Twyla and Roberta. And let me tell you, I was STRUH-GUH-LING trying to figure it out. I kept switching my guess back and forth based on little details, certain comments, and every time I thought I figured it out, I was like wait, maybe not.
By the end, I genuinely couldn’t decide. And that’s what makes this book so powerful. It really forces you to sit with your own assumptions and question why you’re assigning race in the first place.
For such a short story, it does a lot!! It’s not long, it’s not dramatic, but it will have you questioning yourself.
I listened to the audiobook of Recitatif by Toni Morrison on Libby, and wow! This was such a smart idea. Knowing that she wrote this as a social experiment made me want to read it even more.
She intentionally leaves out any clear racial identifiers and puts it all on us as the reader.
The whole story is really about the fact that she never tells us the race of the two main characters Twyla and Roberta. And let me tell you, I was STRUH-GUH-LING trying to figure it out. I kept switching my guess back and forth based on little details, certain comments, and every time I thought I figured it out, I was like wait, maybe not.
By the end, I genuinely couldn’t decide. And that’s what makes this book so powerful. It really forces you to sit with your own assumptions and question why you’re assigning race in the first place.
For such a short story, it does a lot!! It’s not long, it’s not dramatic, but it will have you questioning yourself.