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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If I had a nickel every time I read a high-concept, racially-charged satire of the publishing industry that ultimately wrote a bunch of cheques it couldn't cash, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, and it's probably not that weird that it happened twice.
If this retrospective review of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl in part reads like a comparative essay with R.F Kuang’s Yellowface, then I’d say in my defence the latter novel somewhat invites that given how the first blurb quote on my copy of Yellowface is from Zakiya Dalia Harris. And while they are superficially similar in their tone and content, they take their high concepts in very different directions.
The Other Black Girl follows twentysomething bibliophile Nella, slaving away at her dream job as an editor’s assistant at a prestigious New York publishing house Wagner Books. She is the only black woman in the office, in a not-very-diverse industry that is notorious for being not nearly as progressive as it thinks it is. Plot kicks off when Hazel, the titular Other Black Girl, joins as another editor’s assistant. The two quickly become friends and allies - no catfights here. Hazel all but sweeps Nella off her feet, well-connected, infinitely cool and charming, always knowing the right thing to say or do, and rises up fast through the ranks. But there is a sinister air to Hazel and how effortless her life appears. As it becomes clear that Hazel is not all she claims to be, the increasingly insecure Nella starts to dive deeper into the mysterious history of Wagner’s biggest black writer and only black editor. And she starts finding threatening notes on her desk telling her to quit.
Like Yellowface, the plot is relatively slow, and not a great deal happens for large chunks of the story. But here, that’s okay. Like all good entries in the subgenre of the “office thriller”, Harris understands that workplaces can be spaces of psychological terror long before any grand conspiracies start to unravel. Nella is feeling gaslit and uneasy long before the mysterious Hazel crashes into her life - there’s a painful bit early on where she gets scapegoated for pointing out a racist narrative in a tentpole release that strongly resembles future US Senator J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy - and a large part of her internal narrative is spent trying to differentiate what is a sinister conspiracy vs what the only black woman in the office is just expected to put up with.
The somewhat choppy pacing is also fine because it’s a much stronger character study than Yellowface. It might seem obvious that a black writer writing about a black woman in a racist office does stronger characterization than an Asian writer trying to imagine what’s really going on in the mind of an anti-racist liberal who’s also racist but there we are. Nella makes a compelling protagonist, earnest and principled enough to be a hero but hapless and insecure enough to be relatable. And the advantage of truly making a story focused on the characters is that it much more easily allows the story to be about multiple things.
This novel is mostly about what it means to be the only black woman in the office and what it means to try and make things better from within self-serving racist institutions which pit everyone against each other. It is also about the unease one gets when befriended by the Hazels of the world, people infinitely more competent and cool than you will ever be, and how no matter how nice they are you’ll always feel like they’re out to get you. It’s also about what it means to be someone like Nella, pulled between a black world and white world and underperforming at both, for whom the presence of the titular Other Black Girl only brings this racial insecurity into sharp relief. There’s a recurring and telling bit about how Nella always mentions that her white boyfriend has two mothers, as if the latter somehow to make up for the former.
And all of this means that when at end the diabolical conspiracy is revealed and resolved rather anticlimactically (in way so convoluted that I realised I had completely forgotten what the twist actually was when I started a re-read) I didn’t really mind. The final twists link back thematically to everything I previously discussed and brings to a head the question the reader is asking from the very first page: what on earth is Nella - or any black woman for that matter - really doing at a place as messed-up as Wagner Books?
The question, and answer, ends up shining a mirror back to the reader. What you really doing with your life? Are you really making things better from the inside? Are all our current ideas of diversity and inclusivity actually doing anything? Certainly a stronger moral takeaway for me than Yellowface’s “don’t steal and publish your Asian friend’s manuscript after you watch her choke to death on pancakes”.
If this retrospective review of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl in part reads like a comparative essay with R.F Kuang’s Yellowface, then I’d say in my defence the latter novel somewhat invites that given how the first blurb quote on my copy of Yellowface is from Zakiya Dalia Harris. And while they are superficially similar in their tone and content, they take their high concepts in very different directions.
The Other Black Girl follows twentysomething bibliophile Nella, slaving away at her dream job as an editor’s assistant at a prestigious New York publishing house Wagner Books. She is the only black woman in the office, in a not-very-diverse industry that is notorious for being not nearly as progressive as it thinks it is. Plot kicks off when Hazel, the titular Other Black Girl, joins as another editor’s assistant. The two quickly become friends and allies - no catfights here. Hazel all but sweeps Nella off her feet, well-connected, infinitely cool and charming, always knowing the right thing to say or do, and rises up fast through the ranks. But there is a sinister air to Hazel and how effortless her life appears. As it becomes clear that Hazel is not all she claims to be, the increasingly insecure Nella starts to dive deeper into the mysterious history of Wagner’s biggest black writer and only black editor. And she starts finding threatening notes on her desk telling her to quit.
Like Yellowface, the plot is relatively slow, and not a great deal happens for large chunks of the story. But here, that’s okay. Like all good entries in the subgenre of the “office thriller”, Harris understands that workplaces can be spaces of psychological terror long before any grand conspiracies start to unravel. Nella is feeling gaslit and uneasy long before the mysterious Hazel crashes into her life - there’s a painful bit early on where she gets scapegoated for pointing out a racist narrative in a tentpole release that strongly resembles future US Senator J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy - and a large part of her internal narrative is spent trying to differentiate what is a sinister conspiracy vs what the only black woman in the office is just expected to put up with.
The somewhat choppy pacing is also fine because it’s a much stronger character study than Yellowface. It might seem obvious that a black writer writing about a black woman in a racist office does stronger characterization than an Asian writer trying to imagine what’s really going on in the mind of an anti-racist liberal who’s also racist but there we are. Nella makes a compelling protagonist, earnest and principled enough to be a hero but hapless and insecure enough to be relatable. And the advantage of truly making a story focused on the characters is that it much more easily allows the story to be about multiple things.
This novel is mostly about what it means to be the only black woman in the office and what it means to try and make things better from within self-serving racist institutions which pit everyone against each other. It is also about the unease one gets when befriended by the Hazels of the world, people infinitely more competent and cool than you will ever be, and how no matter how nice they are you’ll always feel like they’re out to get you. It’s also about what it means to be someone like Nella, pulled between a black world and white world and underperforming at both, for whom the presence of the titular Other Black Girl only brings this racial insecurity into sharp relief. There’s a recurring and telling bit about how Nella always mentions that her white boyfriend has two mothers, as if the latter somehow to make up for the former.
And all of this means that when at end the diabolical conspiracy is revealed and resolved rather anticlimactically (in way so convoluted that I realised I had completely forgotten what the twist actually was when I started a re-read) I didn’t really mind. The final twists link back thematically to everything I previously discussed and brings to a head the question the reader is asking from the very first page: what on earth is Nella - or any black woman for that matter - really doing at a place as messed-up as Wagner Books?
The question, and answer, ends up shining a mirror back to the reader. What you really doing with your life? Are you really making things better from the inside? Are all our current ideas of diversity and inclusivity actually doing anything? Certainly a stronger moral takeaway for me than Yellowface’s “don’t steal and publish your Asian friend’s manuscript after you watch her choke to death on pancakes”.
Nella is an editorial assistant and the only black employee at Wagner until Hazel shows up. Instead of having Nella's back when she starts fighting against the typical microaggressions of the publishing industry (and most industries), Hazel starts stepping on her toes and her actions become more and more suspicious.
I had conflicting emotions about this book. I wanted to like it... and I did enjoy reading it, but it felt disconnected IMO. This book definitely takes a while to get to the point. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and I enjoyed the office drama that took place during most of the story. The office storyline made sense and I enjoyed the tension between the characters, especially when Hazel starts to seemingly sabotage Nella's position.
However, when the thriller "Get Out" part of the book started to seep in, about 2/3 of the way through, it just confused me. It felt like a different book, and although I knew something was happening, I wasn't quite sure ~what~ was happening until the last 5% of the novel.
Overall, I did enjoy the book and I think it would be a good read for those who enjoy slow burners, but I wish the ending was a bit less confusing and sudden.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for gifting me the ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!
I had conflicting emotions about this book. I wanted to like it... and I did enjoy reading it, but it felt disconnected IMO. This book definitely takes a while to get to the point. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and I enjoyed the office drama that took place during most of the story. The office storyline made sense and I enjoyed the tension between the characters, especially when Hazel starts to seemingly sabotage Nella's position.
However, when the thriller "Get Out" part of the book started to seep in, about 2/3 of the way through, it just confused me. It felt like a different book, and although I knew something was happening, I wasn't quite sure ~what~ was happening until the last 5% of the novel.
Overall, I did enjoy the book and I think it would be a good read for those who enjoy slow burners, but I wish the ending was a bit less confusing and sudden.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for gifting me the ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!
I first read this book in 2021 and was disappointed in that I was reading it primarily as a thriller- as it had been publicized - and though I received the overall message, I let the disjointed storytelling get in the way. On this second read, with my book club, I found I still had problems following the story as it does spin around a bit. But this time I allowed the message to take over everything and it changed the entire experience.
SPOILER ALERT
That a woman would prefer to be drugged and lulled into complacency rather than endure a lifetime of constant micro- and macro-aggressions just stunned me. Read this book. Or watch the series, I understand it's on Hulu. And suspend the logistics of telling a story and let Nella's experiences guide you.
SPOILER ALERT
That a woman would prefer to be drugged and lulled into complacency rather than endure a lifetime of constant micro- and macro-aggressions just stunned me. Read this book. Or watch the series, I understand it's on Hulu. And suspend the logistics of telling a story and let Nella's experiences guide you.
Nella works for a publisher in New York City. She is the only black person in her office, so when another black girl starts working in the office, she is elated. However, the new girl, Hazel, has her own plans. I found the first couple chapters drew me in right away. The middle of the book was very slow with long chapters. The ending felt rushed and left more questions than it answered. I was altogether very disappointed.
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
1.5 stars that I’m currently rounding up but might round down because this was my most anticipated book of the year and it actively pissed me off. This isn’t because it dared to tackle micro aggressions in liberal, white majority settings. That aspect was what drew me to the book in the first place.
Rather, I can’t shake the feeling that it didn’t tackle these issues well at all, to the point that it came across as hostile to the possibility of friendship between black women for me. I’m white so it’s entirely possible there are nuances I’m missing here and I’m going to seek out other reviews on this book and might change my review if something changes my mind. But my initial feeling about this book is that… it kind of reminds me of White Ivy in a way. These are two domestic-ish thrillers that initially stand out because they’re about women of color in a genre that’s very dominated by white female characters in the suburbs. I did like White Ivy more than this one but I can’t shake the feeling that publishers were okay with these two books over other WoC thrillers because these books repackage pernicious stereotypes in the guise of social commentary. Again I could be reading this wrong and I’ll get into what I mean in the spoiler section but …. Yeah my first reaction after I set the book aside was “well that was messed up and not in the way I think it intended to be.”
It’s sort of hard to talk about the Other Black Girl without spoiling but here are the few thoughts I can have about it outside the spoiler cut.
-I actually liked the first third of then novel! I feel like it did horror best here actually, mostly because it nails that feeling of working in an office and being out of step every minute of the day. I have social anxiety so sometimes I’m second guessing everything while in the office. The thought of having to second guess everything because of micro aggressions really stuck with me and made for a really tense read.
-In the first third I also was very interested in the relationship between Nella and Hazel. The push and pull and the overall awkwardness was very interesting.
-Unfortunately the book doesn’t stay focused on Nella and Hazel. There are a lot of chapters from the POV of other characters and these chapters are incredible hard to follow. This killed any dread or momentum for me because I was having to pause to remember who was who. I normally love books that have multiple POVs and jump around time and tell things in non-chronological order and rarely struggle with this. However with this book I just could not keep up at all.
And now the spoiler section:
-This book like … let’s white people off too easily? Yes there are a lot of harrowing scenes from Nella’s white bosses but they actually kind of drop out of the story towards the end. Richard is driving everything from the shadows but it’s Hazel who does all kinds of emotional damage to Nella. The most memorable bits of tension and horror come from Hazel. If I was following the story correctly this book is positing that there are black women working from the shadows to take down black women in offices with influence so there can only be one in each. The white villainous people are sort of sidelined in this to the point that I’m sure a lot of readers will hate certain black characters but forget that they white villains were even there. And I know that complicity is a thing but at the same time I’m still like…. A secret cabal of black women actively trying to bring other black women down? We’re finally starting to get super hyped up domestic thrillers fronted by Black female characters and this is one of the most hyped of all so far? Seriously??? (Note: I know there have always been thrillers with Black characters but this is the first I can recall getting a Gone Girl sort of media blitz if that makes sense.)
-In theory I liked that the driving force of everything was a hair serum that helps black women compartmentalize microaggressions and how it’s a road to hell being paved with good intentions sort of thing. However the fact that it was put in natural Black hair care products … yeah idk I didn’t like that. Especially since black hairstyles are so demonized it feels weird to almost literally demonize the hair are products. It also ends up going counter to the foreshadowing and creating mixed messages. There’s a very long flashback about all the effort Nella and her mother went to to relax their hair when she was a high school student. Nella then went on to cut her hair and stopped relaxing it and felt liberated/happy with that choice. You’d think the brainwashing agent would be in hair relaxing products after all that but … nope. Literally what is being conveyed here.
ETA: Looked up other reviews and saw one that said this might have been the choice over hair relaxers because nowadays white led media companies want to profit off images of “authentic blackness” and that it can get really predatory. That’s an interesting idea! Wondering if that was the intention …
-I also hated the reason Nella’s mind broke in the end. It was because she felt she deserved to be brainwashed because ….. she didn’t retweet videos of anti-black police brutality enough. Look, police brutality absolutely should be shouted about on social media, and protested against. Feeling perpetual guilt that you aren’t doing enough on your social media profiles is also a very, very real thing. However the narrative does not unpack this at all. It happens ten minutes from the end and right after that we are Nella as a mindless drone. Basically she’s punished by the narrative right on the heels of this personal revelation and something about this all strikes me as just … potentially incredibly cruel to black readers. It feels like it’s going “if you aren’t doing Extremely Online activism constantly then you don’t actually care about how your fellow Black people are being harmed.” Again I feel like this is another thing this book did to shift the burden from White supremacists over to Black victims. God forbid a black woman want to chill out online sometimes instead of retweeting the worst of the worst that can happen to Black people. Yes Nella did seem a little lost and there are legitimate reasons to be annoyed by her but at the same time…. I’m sorry but not being Extremely Online isn’t a crime. Sometimes people have to figure their shit out before they jump into activism. And oftentimes that activism won’t involve twitter. Despite what the media thinks most people aren’t on twitter actually.
-I know the author is a Black woman and this context makes me want to seek out other reviews as well as interviews to figure out her intentions. It’s entirely possible the bad vibes I got from this book is due to bad editing… frankly there’s a lot of it that should have tightened up for better pacing. And if I squint and ignore the non-Nella POVs and how confusing they were, there’s a good inter-office horror/drama in here. It’s just that the way it ended made me wonder what the intended message was here and it makes me wonder why this particular story (that doesn’t seem to believe in Black solidarity, that punishes the main character for not being on all the time, that demonizes natural hair care products) is the one that had multiple publishers proffering seven figures for it over other Black-centric thriller manuscripts that must be floating out there.
Rather, I can’t shake the feeling that it didn’t tackle these issues well at all, to the point that it came across as hostile to the possibility of friendship between black women for me. I’m white so it’s entirely possible there are nuances I’m missing here and I’m going to seek out other reviews on this book and might change my review if something changes my mind. But my initial feeling about this book is that… it kind of reminds me of White Ivy in a way. These are two domestic-ish thrillers that initially stand out because they’re about women of color in a genre that’s very dominated by white female characters in the suburbs. I did like White Ivy more than this one but I can’t shake the feeling that publishers were okay with these two books over other WoC thrillers because these books repackage pernicious stereotypes in the guise of social commentary. Again I could be reading this wrong and I’ll get into what I mean in the spoiler section but …. Yeah my first reaction after I set the book aside was “well that was messed up and not in the way I think it intended to be.”
It’s sort of hard to talk about the Other Black Girl without spoiling but here are the few thoughts I can have about it outside the spoiler cut.
-I actually liked the first third of then novel! I feel like it did horror best here actually, mostly because it nails that feeling of working in an office and being out of step every minute of the day. I have social anxiety so sometimes I’m second guessing everything while in the office. The thought of having to second guess everything because of micro aggressions really stuck with me and made for a really tense read.
-In the first third I also was very interested in the relationship between Nella and Hazel. The push and pull and the overall awkwardness was very interesting.
-Unfortunately the book doesn’t stay focused on Nella and Hazel. There are a lot of chapters from the POV of other characters and these chapters are incredible hard to follow. This killed any dread or momentum for me because I was having to pause to remember who was who. I normally love books that have multiple POVs and jump around time and tell things in non-chronological order and rarely struggle with this. However with this book I just could not keep up at all.
And now the spoiler section:
Spoiler
-This book like … let’s white people off too easily? Yes there are a lot of harrowing scenes from Nella’s white bosses but they actually kind of drop out of the story towards the end. Richard is driving everything from the shadows but it’s Hazel who does all kinds of emotional damage to Nella. The most memorable bits of tension and horror come from Hazel. If I was following the story correctly this book is positing that there are black women working from the shadows to take down black women in offices with influence so there can only be one in each. The white villainous people are sort of sidelined in this to the point that I’m sure a lot of readers will hate certain black characters but forget that they white villains were even there. And I know that complicity is a thing but at the same time I’m still like…. A secret cabal of black women actively trying to bring other black women down? We’re finally starting to get super hyped up domestic thrillers fronted by Black female characters and this is one of the most hyped of all so far? Seriously??? (Note: I know there have always been thrillers with Black characters but this is the first I can recall getting a Gone Girl sort of media blitz if that makes sense.)
-In theory I liked that the driving force of everything was a hair serum that helps black women compartmentalize microaggressions and how it’s a road to hell being paved with good intentions sort of thing. However the fact that it was put in natural Black hair care products … yeah idk I didn’t like that. Especially since black hairstyles are so demonized it feels weird to almost literally demonize the hair are products. It also ends up going counter to the foreshadowing and creating mixed messages. There’s a very long flashback about all the effort Nella and her mother went to to relax their hair when she was a high school student. Nella then went on to cut her hair and stopped relaxing it and felt liberated/happy with that choice. You’d think the brainwashing agent would be in hair relaxing products after all that but … nope. Literally what is being conveyed here.
ETA: Looked up other reviews and saw one that said this might have been the choice over hair relaxers because nowadays white led media companies want to profit off images of “authentic blackness” and that it can get really predatory. That’s an interesting idea! Wondering if that was the intention …
-I also hated the reason Nella’s mind broke in the end. It was because she felt she deserved to be brainwashed because ….. she didn’t retweet videos of anti-black police brutality enough. Look, police brutality absolutely should be shouted about on social media, and protested against. Feeling perpetual guilt that you aren’t doing enough on your social media profiles is also a very, very real thing. However the narrative does not unpack this at all. It happens ten minutes from the end and right after that we are Nella as a mindless drone. Basically she’s punished by the narrative right on the heels of this personal revelation and something about this all strikes me as just … potentially incredibly cruel to black readers. It feels like it’s going “if you aren’t doing Extremely Online activism constantly then you don’t actually care about how your fellow Black people are being harmed.” Again I feel like this is another thing this book did to shift the burden from White supremacists over to Black victims. God forbid a black woman want to chill out online sometimes instead of retweeting the worst of the worst that can happen to Black people. Yes Nella did seem a little lost and there are legitimate reasons to be annoyed by her but at the same time…. I’m sorry but not being Extremely Online isn’t a crime. Sometimes people have to figure their shit out before they jump into activism. And oftentimes that activism won’t involve twitter. Despite what the media thinks most people aren’t on twitter actually.
-I know the author is a Black woman and this context makes me want to seek out other reviews as well as interviews to figure out her intentions. It’s entirely possible the bad vibes I got from this book is due to bad editing… frankly there’s a lot of it that should have tightened up for better pacing. And if I squint and ignore the non-Nella POVs and how confusing they were, there’s a good inter-office horror/drama in here. It’s just that the way it ended made me wonder what the intended message was here and it makes me wonder why this particular story (that doesn’t seem to believe in Black solidarity, that punishes the main character for not being on all the time, that demonizes natural hair care products) is the one that had multiple publishers proffering seven figures for it over other Black-centric thriller manuscripts that must be floating out there.