The DO Book Club, Nov. 2025: ‘Recitatif’

As physicians, we often find ourselves reading clinical guidelines, laboratory reports, etc., while interpreting data and deciphering clinical trials. We do this to improve our understanding of the human body and provide the best care for patients. We are trained to read symptoms, interpret tests and make decisions in conditions with great uncertainty.

Readers will find themselves on similar yet challenging grounds when reading Toni Morrison’s remarkable (and only) short story “Recitatif.” First published in 1983 and recently reissued, it deserves a place on every physician’s nightstand. In between 96 and 126 pages (depending on which version you pick up), this book hardly resembles the sprawling narratives of Morrison’s other books, such as the well-known “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon.” This novella’s brevity is a brilliant experiment in ambiguity. The novella is unsettling; it instructs and redefines the biases which physicians bring and surround themselves with daily.

Meeting Twyla and Roberta

When we first meet Twyla and Roberta, two children around the age of eight who become friends in terrible circumstances at a homeless shelter, we notice that they both feel out of place, yet have a common connection.

“… It didn’t matter that we looked like salt and pepper standing there and that’s what the other kids called us sometimes … We didn’t like each other all that much at first, but nobody else wanted to play with us because we weren’t real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were dumped.” (p. 5-6)

They both have mothers who, for distinct reasons, cannot care for them. They both display an ability to survive and adjust to their tumultuous lives. Through the course of time, they drift apart and reconnect with each other at various stages of their adult life. As the story progresses, Morrison deftly withholds one uniquely intriguing piece of information—which girl is Black and which girl is white.

She brilliantly scatters narrative clues, such as food and hairstyle preferences, that seem to point to a conclusion that muddies the waters.

“Mary’s idea of supper was popcorn and a can of Yoo-hoo. Hot mashed potatoes and two weenies was like Thanksgiving for me.” (p. 6)

‘We must look deeper’

Throughout the book, Morrison is eloquent in determining and telling readers that which is unsettling—that what readers see most and first is race. In doing so, readers miss so much more.

As physicians, we make assumptions and prejudices. We read, we revise and we reprocess. “Recitatif” shows us how we must look deeper and be open to more than superficial interpretation.  

The book illuminates the often invisible ways in which we perceive the world. It shows how people are shaped by the events that occur in their lives. We are encouraged by Twyla and Roberta, young girls with little power, subject to the whims of adults, including social hierarchies, wealth, race and circumstance. Despite this, they are able to overcome incredible obstacles.

For me, this story is an invitation to humility, to hear what is left unsaid. In medicine we surround ourselves with the exonerations of cultural competencies and the need to address disparities to rule out bias. Morrison offers something richer. She offers an interview that unsettles you. Unless one is open to it, readers will miss it. The missing part is handed to you in the final statement of the story.

“Recitatif” is a rare, brilliant literary work. Morrison is well-known for her complex writing. Readers need to understand the cultural context of her writing and the depths of the social and political environment surrounding her work. This book will show open-minded readers how we all carry intrinsic biases within us.

Ambiguity can frustrate the best of us. In literature, it can refine us. There comes a point in a physician’s life when they realize uncertainty cannot be eliminated; we must live within it and strive to be more attentive and ethically and humanely present. It is a lesson in the art of seeing what is and is not present. “Recitatif” is a lesson in discipline and a chance to observe how assumptions shape interpretations. In that sense, it is not just a story, but a text to be practiced, like medicine.

Related reading:

The DO Book Club, Sept. 2025: ‘Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy’

The DO Book Club, Aug. 2025: ‘​The Women’