Two girlfriends, two skin colors – but which girl has which skin color will not be revealed: Toni Morrison’s fascinating narrative experiment “Recitative” finally in German.
From
Jörg Haentzschel
Twyla’s mother “dance all night”. Roberta’s mother is ill. That’s why the two eight-year-old girls come to the children’s home. Their destiny welds them together, they get along well. They are the only ones who are not orphans, the only ones “in heaven without dear departed parents”. But one thing separates the protagonists in Toni Morrison’s story “Recitative”: One of them is white, the other black. But readers don’t know which is which.