Technically, Recitatif is a short story – generously, it could be called a novella – but was released recently (I think) as a full book with an introduction by Zadie Smith, and so I’ll count it as a novel unto itself here. For the unfamiliar, this is a story where race is central to the plot – but never clarified. The story follows two girls, Twyla and Roberta, who were brought to room 406 at a sort of boarding school for children whose parents are unable to care for them. Twyla, our narrator, and Roberta are unique in the home because they both have mothers who are living – one is sick, and the other dances all night. We know that they are two different races – but it is left to the reader to decide who is white and who is black. Twyla knows her mother, the dancer, won’t be happy for her to be rooming with someone of another race. Roberta’s mother is cold to Twyla’s mother when they eventually meet at a family picnic.
As adults, Twyla and Roberta run into each other and revisit their time at St. Bonny’s. As young adults, Twyla was working as a waitress when Roberta stumbles in with her friends. Roberta’s interested in getting high and seeing Jimi Hendrix in person, and all but dismisses Twyla in that encounter. Later, Twyla marries a man with a loud family and settles into a working class neighborhood. Again, she runs into Roberta – who has now married into wealth and is now the sort of woman who wears diamonds to a grocery store. They catch up together – and, as revisiting the past is wont to do, they realize they have deeply different views about shared aspects of their childhood. Two issues are most notable – their reactions to the importance of race in their relationship, and their understanding of something that takes place with the third female character – Maggie.
Maggie is described as a woman who likely has a number of disabilities. She can’t speak, and she has trouble walking. She works in St. Bonny’s, and the girls there are not very nice to her. Twyla initially remembers Maggie as someone that she and Roberta were only mildly rude to, on occasion, as young girls might be to someone working in a place they don’t particularly want to be. Roberta brings up an incident that Twyla doesn’t recall – an instance where they not only witnessed but were party to an act of violence against Maggie – and further, tells Twyla that she was black, which adds a layer of complexity to the memory.
Later, race continues to play a role in their relationship, as they take opposite positions on the issue of bussing children to segregated school districts. These women constantly circle one another in their lives, always centering race in their relationship – and yet, at the end, it’s still possible to imagine each woman being on either side. Their memories, their lived experiences, their opinions – they are all heavily informed by their own race, and yet – as a reader, we can’t be sure who is black and who is white.
