"Recitatif" was published in a 1983 anthology of writings by African-American women entitled Confirmation. The purpose of the anthology—edited by Amiri Baraka, one of the most prominent voices of the radical Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and his wife Amina—was to confirm the existence of several generations of black female writers whose work was often ignored or undervalued. Baraka writes in his introduction that the intention of the anthology is "in distinct contrast to the norm in American letters where 'American literature' is for the most part white and male and bourgeois." This is in keeping with Morrison's view of her mission as a writer. Saying that she is foremost a reader, she claims that she writes the kind of books that she wants to read but hasn't been able to find.

The Confirmation anthology marked the beginning of a period when...