Book Review: The Other Black Girl
8/01/2020
Book Review | The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Ooooh this book! I’m going to be so careful how I review this because I really loved launching into this novel with a fairly limited idea of what to expect within the pages. For that reason I’m going to go very light on discussing plot here and focus instead on how I felt about the novel as a whole!
The Other Black Girl is set in the offices of the fictional Wagner Publishing in Manhattan, where assistant editor Nella has long been the only Black member of staff. Struggling to get her voice heard when she addresses her concerns about racial stereotyping in a hit author’s new book, she’s delighted to discover that the company’s brand new hire Hazel is another Black woman. The two hit it off immediately but then Nella begins receiving anonymous notes telling her to leave Wagner immediately and she notices that something about Hazel isn’t adding up. I was drawn in by the thriller premise but I stayed for the hot take on the publishing industry and the clever, unique story that spanned decades, made me think and felt totally fresh.
I don’t know a huge amount about the publishing industry other than what I try, as a writer, to understand. I’ve been told that it’s very white and middle class on the whole and, after the BLM protests last year brought this discussion to the fore and celebrated Black authors, I have followed a lot of initiatives and indie publishing houses that are working to change this. The Other Black Girl’s author Zakiya Dalila Harris worked in publishing in Manhattan before leaving to write this book and I appreciated the opportunity to experience this world through her eyes, to see the workplace in action rather than discussed in think pieces. The novel is very much set in the modern day and I particularly enjoyed Nella’s attempts to communicate her experiences to White colleagues in the discussion forums Wagner sets up in an attempt to increase diversity at the company. The conversations she recounts are at once funny and depressing, and reminiscent of what has been happening at companies across much of the world at the moment. Harris is excellent at writing dialogue and interactions that crackle with subtext. She does this with Nella’s attempts to communicate with her boss Vera and with Hazel, experiences that seem clearly negative but are then smoothed over again and again until both Nella and the reader begin to wonder how much is reality and how much paranoia.
In this novel Harris demonstrates a talent for writing social commentary while also weaving a story with an intriguing mystery at its heart. Like many other thrillers it was a compulsive read and at about the halfway point I hardly put the book down, desperate to find out who was behind the notes. Unlike other thrillers however, it felt packed full of information that was new to me, and I regularly found myself stopping to think. The structure really lent itself to this, switching between locations, characters and time periods to weave various aspects of the story together.
This is the second book I’ve read - Queenie was the first - where the protagonist is a Black woman, a fact which is essential to the storytelling. Like Queenie I found the experience of seeing a familiar world but from a different perspective really interesting and a little bit disconcerting. This, for me, felt like it went a step further than Queenie, exploring the world of the book through Black women of different ages and personalities which I loved. Obviously, in real life, I’m White and so I wouldn’t necessarily be naturally included in many of the conversations and situations that take place in the novel, nor would I have any way of adding to them if I were. So, for me, this book epitomises a hugely important aspect for reading, which is the opportunity to enter worlds you simply wouldn’t otherwise. There’s regular studies that look at how fiction readers have more empathy than non-readers, and I’m sure this is a key part of it.
The core concept of the book is surprising and strange, bordering on sci fi but firmly entrenched in our current society. Mostly I loved this although at times I found aspects of it a little convoluted and found myself flipping backwards and forwards to check what time period we were in, who was speaking or exactly who I was most concerned for. The downside for me to the multi-faceted approach to this novel is that I didn’t feel 100% satisfied that everyone’s story was tied up at the end. However, because this story is so closely tied to reality, I understand that individual stories don’t realistically end in a neat and tidy way.
I’m not surprised at all that I’ve already seen people shouting about this book, if anything I would have anticipated hearing about it even more! It’s at once an enjoyable page-turner and what feels like an essential discussion of modern day diversity problems in the workplace, a fresh work from a fantastic talent.