Toni Morrison–winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and one of America’s gre

Toni Morrison–winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and one of America’s greatest writers-passed away in 2019. She is best known for her novels. which taken together present a stunning and tragic landscape of the history of African-Americans. “Recitif” is one of her few short stories, but despite its length it is very ambitious in terms of scope and depth, taking its two central characters through some of the most tumultuous times in race relations this nation has experienced
I want to focus here on one of her strategies: though she makes it clear that one of the characters is white and the other black, she very carefully never specifies which is which. Why do you think she does this? Does it make any difference to the meaning of the story? Do you find yourself, as a reader, looking for clues to help you assign a race to these characters? If so, why? Does reading “Recitif’ tell us something about the very ways in which we read?
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