The Art of Narrative: Reading Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”

Dr. Mobley will present an approximately 45-minute lecture on Toni Morrison, focusing on her short story “Recitatif,” followed by a Q&A session lasting approximately 15 minutes.

A distinguished scholar on the works of Toni Morrison, Dr. Marilyn Sanders Mobley is Emerita Professor of English and African American Studies as well as former Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Mobley has published two books about Toni Morrison: Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni Morrison: The Cultural Function of Narrative (LSU Press, 1991), one of the first cross-cultural studies on Toni Morrison, and Toni Morrison and the Geopoetics of Place, Race, and Be/longing (Temple University Press, 2024), which won the 2026 Toni Morrison Society Book Prize. Dr. Mobley is also the author of the spiritual memoir The Strawberry Room and Other Places Where a Woman Finds Herself (Westbow Press, 2016).