Race/[Gender]

Gender is severely backgrounded in "Recitatif". "Recitatif" can be viewed as a nineteen-page distillation of Toni Morrison's grand project of deconstructing race and racism, which characterizes her remarkable oeuvre. Although "Recitatif" epitomizes Morrison's oeuvre in its counterhegemonic attack on racial stereotypes, the story stands apart from her novels in its bracketing of gender. In contrast to Morrison's carefully ambiguous manipulation of race, which it is her purpose to demystify—or, more accurately, to lead her readers to demystify—"Recitatif" carefully brackets gender; Morrison's deconstruction of sexism is left to her other work. The distinctively "oral" quality of "Recitatif" also contributes to the story's strategy of recruiting the reader in its mission to deconstruct racism. "Recitatif" exemplifies what Stepto means by an African-American storytelling narrative. In "Recitatif," the debate about busing as a means of school desegregation, a topic that consumed Americans from the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Ed.