You know what, the more I think about this story, the more I feel like, its pure and unrefined, Genius

Honestly, I was scared to dive into the book as its from a prominent author who is an icon of its own. I was interested with Recitatif due to the prose itself, in how its the Only short story that Toni Morrison ever wrote and that its somewhat an experiment in itself, where she did not put the races of the two main characters, till the very end. The only thing that we know from these characters is that, one of them is black and one of them is white. What makes it more mindblowing was the narrative itself, and the point of the story, where at the end of the day, its not JUST about racism anymore, and that is why, this story is a 5 stars for me.

Personal Ratings : 5 🌟

The story is of two characters, Roberta and Twyla who grew up in an orphanage. With a sickly mother and a deranged one for the latter, they became friends there. The story revolves in Morrison somehow putting an experiment for the readers themselves, on how we are so fixated to guess in which characters were black and white that we often mislooked the elephant issue in the whole story, and that to me was what made this short story, concise and packed with everything that Morrison wanted to experiment.

Personal Thoughts
The story started with an introduction from Zadie Smith, which was quite interesting to read as well; and also very informative. She gave context to Morrison's works and with that, it gave somewhat a clue on what we were about to dive into. Morrison is an author that I was very scared to dive into, for the fear of "will I be able to process her story and the message that she intended." Fortunately for me, when I figured out what was her experiment about, every notion, theories and just thoughts were just blowned away.

Morrison to me is such a good storyteller. She navigates the story into making the readers so focused on the narrative of these two characters, which we don't know their races till the end, that we overlooked the biggest thing that is happening in the story. The story somewhat really makes Morrison's experiment succesful, in a way that makes us readers diverted our attention to something that is , honestly, at the end, was not the main point of what humanity is about. We had somewhat restricted ourselves to the narratives and streotypes that we are used to in characters, and even, in real life, that we could not live with the fact that we kept guessing their races till the end of the story.

Morrison showed that no matter what race you are, black or white, the most important thing is compassion and humanity knows no colour. I wouldn't want to spoil the story, but lord, the more I think about it the more I'm mindblowned by the fact, that just with one diversion can totally navigate a reader's perception to a story, and that's why I think this story is quite a genius one. It was clever, cunning and also, is a slap to everyone's face, in which we are often oblivious (or chose to be) for people who needs our help the most.

Such a stunning short story, and one , that I would definitely remember for a very very long time!

Thank you so much to Times Reads for generously providing me this gorgeous copy of the book.

Disclaimers: All my reviews are my thoughts of the book and according to my personal preferences. Even though I had received a review copy, it does not affect my review and honest thoughts for the book.