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3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I had to go back and re-listen to parts of this book. I am feeling like I am not Black enough. Sometimes I just did not understand what was going on. In the beginning one lady kept talking about her hair itching and I really did not get that until the end of the book. Not all of us get things from the beginning. Once I understood what was happening, it made me think that this could almost be real, especially with the interactions I've had with other black girls in the workplace. When I think of it, sometimes it would be good not to care about the micro aggressions we experience. My only issue with that is we are not fixing the problem, we are just allowing others to continue to treat us unfairly just to get what we want. Also, we may still not get what we want since we do not have the control.
Overall, this was a great book. I do not read a lot of books written by black authors because many deal with real world issues and when I read I want fantasy. Every so often I find one that I find interesting and I read it. Generally, the turn out to be awesome books.
Overall, this was a great book. I do not read a lot of books written by black authors because many deal with real world issues and when I read I want fantasy. Every so often I find one that I find interesting and I read it. Generally, the turn out to be awesome books.
Well I finished it…
Enthralling but also kinda sucks, 2.5
Enthralling but also kinda sucks, 2.5
Well, this was certainly… a book.
If I wanted to stay true to my own standards, I’d have given The Other Black Girl 2 stars for “it was ok”. It’s getting 3, though, because while I didn’t love it, it definitely kept me entertained – even if that entertainment was often steeped in exasperation and quite a few ‘wtf?’ moments.
Being neither Black nor American, I can’t say much about the social commentary aspect of this book. There are a lot of 1 star reviews here from Black women, and I think that’s something worth taking into consideration. Personally, I still can’t say if Harris’ intent was to provide serious reflection on racism in the workplace or if the book was, like some explain, satire, but whichever it is, I don’t think I have the cultural context to judge if it’s well-executed or not.
The writing itself was, IMO, okay; it was an overall easy read. Marketing this book as a riveting thriller, though, was a disservice – the plot doesn’t really pick up until the last 60-70 pages, and for the most part, I’d call The Other Black Girl much more character- than plot-driven; we don’t even get to the first, very vague ‘thriller’ accents until around page 100. Most of the book is written in third person, but there are a few chapters from first person POV, at which point I couldn’t help but ask – why? Even now I can’t really see any added value in this occasional switch of perspectives. There are also some references that a non-American reader might not get, which is why I’m moderately curious about translations of this book. Is it full of footnotes to explain what ‘Oreo’ means, or who Spike from Brooklyn is? (This is not an argument ‘against’ the book – just curiosity.)
Finally, the biggest criticism re: writing style I’ve seen here is that the book drags on, paragraphs taking up pages after pages without adding anything to the story… As someone who enjoys getting glimpses into characters’ past and thoughts, I don’t agree with that, but I do have to admit that, at times, it felt clunky. Multiple times, those memories are triggered by an ongoing conversation, leading to something like this:
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Not much, you?”
“Also not much. Wow, I really like your sweater.”
Cue two to three pages of some distant memory related to sweaters, after which we get back to the present dialogue as if we hadn’t just taken a pretty lengthy detour from the topic.
Alright, so that’s the writing – now what about the rest?
To put it shortly, this book made it very hard for me to like any of the characters. Not that we really get to know anyone other than the main protagonist, Nella – even those first person POV chapters are so few and far between that the characters don’t feel fully fleshed out; rather, they mostly serve as tools to provide context outside of what Nella herself witnesses or can know. Everyone else – Nella’s boyfriend, best friend, coworkers, to some extent even Hazel – feel more like props than people; we don’t learn anything about them except for the very basics. They literally don’t exist outside of their interactions with Nella.
And Nella… ah, Nella…
I said that I don’t feel comfortable commenting on the social context, and I stand by it, but I can’t avoid saying that for the majority of the book, Nella, to me, comes off as someone suffering from what the youths call Being Chronically Online. She’s incredibly active on social media, always up to date with the latest cases of discrimination and racism everywhere in the country; she forms her opinions based on (and constantly references) this one guy’s YouTube videos; a lot of how she perceives the word is influenced by news stories and internet discourse more than by her own lived experience. She only feels good around people who are her ‘in group’; everywhere else, she’s anxious and on guard. She doesn’t trust her coworkers (all of whom are white) and is sensitive to even the tiniest microaggressions, which as you can imagine doesn’t make for a very happy mental state.
Now, speaking from the perspective of a queer person – this is hard to criticize because, on some level, none of Nella’s beliefs are unfounded. Queerphobia is etched into the very basis of many modern societies; even in places where extreme and overt discrimination has become more or less socially unacceptable, it shows in other, smaller, at first glance more ‘innocent’ ways that don’t do much damage in isolation, but wear us down as they build up over the years. Same goes for racism. Being a minority is exhausting. Being Nella sounds exhausting, which, to be fair, ends up kind of being the point.
Except, I want to believe that there’s some balance to be found. There is such a thing as being too aware of social issues – going down a rabbit hole of social media and hyperfocusing on every single instance of us being wronged only leads to misery. It makes us paranoid, distrustful, and deeply unhappy on a personal level, because at one point, only being around people who 100% agree with our beliefs starts to sound safe and timeworthy – but the real world doesn’t work like that. Sooner or later, we all have to interact with people who don’t always Get It.
Honestly, I could see some of my own old neurotic, self-conscious tendencies in Nella. See this example:
So, to recap: Nella shows up to work way before the time she and most other people normally come in; the receptionist, India, doesn’t expect much company so early in the morning. She’s lost in her magazine, probably only half paying attention to whatever’s going on around her. She acts like most people would act, interrupted mid-task by something way outside of their usual routine.
To Nella, this reads as hostility, like India’s distraction is targeting her specifically – even though there’s a thousand reasons why someone (be it a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger) could act absent-minded or simply not warm during a very brief interaction with us. Taking it for a personal slight is, I think, the result of something between self-centeredness, hypervigilance, and low self esteem that makes people unable not to seek validation in others.
There’s another example of this later in the book, when Nella is feeling inadequate and ignored at work, especially since people seem to like Hazel much more. At this point, of course, we already know that there’s something off about Hazel, but still – at the very beginning of the book, we already learned how Nella always does her best to avoid prolonged small talk with her coworkers, how she doesn’t like it when they stop by her cubicle to chat with her, how she’s always uncomfortable around them… Later, she’s bitter that two other assistants no longer invite her to go to lunch with them, choosing to hang out with Hazel instead – but this comes after Nella had already turned their offer to join them down five times, for Reasons, and then did nothing to re-invite herself or show any interest at all. Well, yeah: constantly alienating yourself from people leads to people moving on from you.
Yet I didn’t stop reading. Mostly because, as vaguely grating as Nella was, the plot… uh… kept me going.
So… remember the Resistance?
We find out about them around the time when Nella gets the first Anonymous Note at work, telling her to leave Wagner. What the Resistance, well, resists isn’t clear at first, and then it sort of is (in that way that kinda doesn’t make that much sense), and then it really is, at which point I literally put the book down to stare into the camera like I’m on The Office.
The Resistance is an underground movement dedicated to monitoring and (presumably) fighting against the titular Other Black Girls. (Yes, they call them that.) Up until the Big Plot Twist, those OBGs (as they are commonly called, because ‘Other Black Girl’ is just too much of a mouthful) kinda just sound like your typical too-ambitious, cutthroat women who don’t care whose backs they have to step on in order to get to the top. They’re like the Black woman who stole another (Black and female) character’s medical research and published it as her own. They’re like Hazel, who’s always down to chat with her white coworkers about their inane white habits and who easily throws Nella under the bus during a public discussion about the topic of race in a book by one of Wagner’s most popular (therefore, important) authors. Nasty? Yeah. Unethical? For sure. Traitors? I don’t know. Not my place to make judgements when it comes to that, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this was indeed a topic in the Black community – just like the queer community has our ‘good gays’; gays who mold themselves into people whom cishet people ‘can respect’ because it makes them more ‘palatable’, even at the cost of their own identity.
So maybe this book could have been an attempt to answer the age old question: can we coexist with people from the out group without losing ourselves? After all, even if Hazel doesn’t seem to care much about Black solidarity in the workplace as far as Nella is concerned, she does lead a group to help young Black creatives get their works out there, and she does succeed at reanimating Wagner’s diversity-related efforts, even if the editor in chief thinks of it mainly as a publicity stunt. Is that a net positive?
Now, while the Resistance keep wondering “what’s changing regular Black girls into OBGs?”, Hazel’s place in the story remains a mystery, and not really the entertaining type. They’ve been keeping tabs on her; they know that. But why the hell did she move all the way from Boston to NYC? I kept thinking, come on, surely it wasn’t just to turn Nella into another OBG? Like, if you want to change the whole community, wouldn’t you get better results starting a social campaign or whatever instead of targetting individual people? Besides, why Nella?
This is where we finally arrive at the Big Plot Twist – yep, the one that made me go full ‘Huh? WTF’. Hazel’s purpose is revealed. It feels a bit like that meme of a train suddenly hitting that poor, unsuspecting truck.
…Yeah.
Secretly engineered hair grease that will “make you more amenable when it comes to working for and with white folks”, with the best part of it being, apparently, its ability to “preclude any guilt you may feel from doing so”. And the way it works is by “numbing your ventromedical prefrontal cortex”. I don’t even feel like googling if that makes even a lick of sense.
Oh, and it’s heavily implied that somehow this is all linked to the fact that Richard Wagner, the apparent mastermind behind organizing all of that on a country-wide scale, has a thing for Black women.
Honestly, if you can and are willing to completely ignore how this book may relate to very real but also very US-centric problems, I’d recommend it, if only for that big reveal at the end.
If I wanted to stay true to my own standards, I’d have given The Other Black Girl 2 stars for “it was ok”. It’s getting 3, though, because while I didn’t love it, it definitely kept me entertained – even if that entertainment was often steeped in exasperation and quite a few ‘wtf?’ moments.
Being neither Black nor American, I can’t say much about the social commentary aspect of this book. There are a lot of 1 star reviews here from Black women, and I think that’s something worth taking into consideration. Personally, I still can’t say if Harris’ intent was to provide serious reflection on racism in the workplace or if the book was, like some explain, satire, but whichever it is, I don’t think I have the cultural context to judge if it’s well-executed or not.
The writing itself was, IMO, okay; it was an overall easy read. Marketing this book as a riveting thriller, though, was a disservice – the plot doesn’t really pick up until the last 60-70 pages, and for the most part, I’d call The Other Black Girl much more character- than plot-driven; we don’t even get to the first, very vague ‘thriller’ accents until around page 100. Most of the book is written in third person, but there are a few chapters from first person POV, at which point I couldn’t help but ask – why? Even now I can’t really see any added value in this occasional switch of perspectives. There are also some references that a non-American reader might not get, which is why I’m moderately curious about translations of this book. Is it full of footnotes to explain what ‘Oreo’ means, or who Spike from Brooklyn is? (This is not an argument ‘against’ the book – just curiosity.)
Finally, the biggest criticism re: writing style I’ve seen here is that the book drags on, paragraphs taking up pages after pages without adding anything to the story… As someone who enjoys getting glimpses into characters’ past and thoughts, I don’t agree with that, but I do have to admit that, at times, it felt clunky. Multiple times, those memories are triggered by an ongoing conversation, leading to something like this:
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Not much, you?”
“Also not much. Wow, I really like your sweater.”
Cue two to three pages of some distant memory related to sweaters, after which we get back to the present dialogue as if we hadn’t just taken a pretty lengthy detour from the topic.
Alright, so that’s the writing – now what about the rest?
To put it shortly, this book made it very hard for me to like any of the characters. Not that we really get to know anyone other than the main protagonist, Nella – even those first person POV chapters are so few and far between that the characters don’t feel fully fleshed out; rather, they mostly serve as tools to provide context outside of what Nella herself witnesses or can know. Everyone else – Nella’s boyfriend, best friend, coworkers, to some extent even Hazel – feel more like props than people; we don’t learn anything about them except for the very basics. They literally don’t exist outside of their interactions with Nella.
And Nella… ah, Nella…
I said that I don’t feel comfortable commenting on the social context, and I stand by it, but I can’t avoid saying that for the majority of the book, Nella, to me, comes off as someone suffering from what the youths call Being Chronically Online. She’s incredibly active on social media, always up to date with the latest cases of discrimination and racism everywhere in the country; she forms her opinions based on (and constantly references) this one guy’s YouTube videos; a lot of how she perceives the word is influenced by news stories and internet discourse more than by her own lived experience. She only feels good around people who are her ‘in group’; everywhere else, she’s anxious and on guard. She doesn’t trust her coworkers (all of whom are white) and is sensitive to even the tiniest microaggressions, which as you can imagine doesn’t make for a very happy mental state.
Now, speaking from the perspective of a queer person – this is hard to criticize because, on some level, none of Nella’s beliefs are unfounded. Queerphobia is etched into the very basis of many modern societies; even in places where extreme and overt discrimination has become more or less socially unacceptable, it shows in other, smaller, at first glance more ‘innocent’ ways that don’t do much damage in isolation, but wear us down as they build up over the years. Same goes for racism. Being a minority is exhausting. Being Nella sounds exhausting, which, to be fair, ends up kind of being the point.
Except, I want to believe that there’s some balance to be found. There is such a thing as being too aware of social issues – going down a rabbit hole of social media and hyperfocusing on every single instance of us being wronged only leads to misery. It makes us paranoid, distrustful, and deeply unhappy on a personal level, because at one point, only being around people who 100% agree with our beliefs starts to sound safe and timeworthy – but the real world doesn’t work like that. Sooner or later, we all have to interact with people who don’t always Get It.
Honestly, I could see some of my own old neurotic, self-conscious tendencies in Nella. See this example:
[Nella] continued on toward the elevators, fumbling breathlessly for her work ID, ready to explain why she was here so early. But as she drew closer, India's head didn't tilt up the way it normally did.
“India. Hey. How's it going? Did you enjoy the rest of your birthday yesterday?”
India's eyes darted up from her magazine. She appeared startled by the intrusion. Maybe even a little confused by it. “Oh. Hi, Nella,” she said, with a touch of listlessness. “What'd you say?”
“I... I just asked if you had a good birthday.”
“Oh. Yeah, I did. Thanks.”
She looked back down at her magazine.
Nella felt her throat tighten. That's it? she wondered as she stepped into the elevator and pressed thirteen. The metal doors shut in front of her at an excruciatingly slow pace, granting her one last long look at the woman who had given her such an icy reception.
So, to recap: Nella shows up to work way before the time she and most other people normally come in; the receptionist, India, doesn’t expect much company so early in the morning. She’s lost in her magazine, probably only half paying attention to whatever’s going on around her. She acts like most people would act, interrupted mid-task by something way outside of their usual routine.
To Nella, this reads as hostility, like India’s distraction is targeting her specifically – even though there’s a thousand reasons why someone (be it a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger) could act absent-minded or simply not warm during a very brief interaction with us. Taking it for a personal slight is, I think, the result of something between self-centeredness, hypervigilance, and low self esteem that makes people unable not to seek validation in others.
There’s another example of this later in the book, when Nella is feeling inadequate and ignored at work, especially since people seem to like Hazel much more. At this point, of course, we already know that there’s something off about Hazel, but still – at the very beginning of the book, we already learned how Nella always does her best to avoid prolonged small talk with her coworkers, how she doesn’t like it when they stop by her cubicle to chat with her, how she’s always uncomfortable around them… Later, she’s bitter that two other assistants no longer invite her to go to lunch with them, choosing to hang out with Hazel instead – but this comes after Nella had already turned their offer to join them down five times, for Reasons, and then did nothing to re-invite herself or show any interest at all. Well, yeah: constantly alienating yourself from people leads to people moving on from you.
Yet I didn’t stop reading. Mostly because, as vaguely grating as Nella was, the plot… uh… kept me going.
So… remember the Resistance?
We find out about them around the time when Nella gets the first Anonymous Note at work, telling her to leave Wagner. What the Resistance, well, resists isn’t clear at first, and then it sort of is (in that way that kinda doesn’t make that much sense), and then it really is, at which point I literally put the book down to stare into the camera like I’m on The Office.
The Resistance is an underground movement dedicated to monitoring and (presumably) fighting against the titular Other Black Girls. (Yes, they call them that.) Up until the Big Plot Twist, those OBGs (as they are commonly called, because ‘Other Black Girl’ is just too much of a mouthful) kinda just sound like your typical too-ambitious, cutthroat women who don’t care whose backs they have to step on in order to get to the top. They’re like the Black woman who stole another (Black and female) character’s medical research and published it as her own. They’re like Hazel, who’s always down to chat with her white coworkers about their inane white habits and who easily throws Nella under the bus during a public discussion about the topic of race in a book by one of Wagner’s most popular (therefore, important) authors. Nasty? Yeah. Unethical? For sure. Traitors? I don’t know. Not my place to make judgements when it comes to that, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this was indeed a topic in the Black community – just like the queer community has our ‘good gays’; gays who mold themselves into people whom cishet people ‘can respect’ because it makes them more ‘palatable’, even at the cost of their own identity.
So maybe this book could have been an attempt to answer the age old question: can we coexist with people from the out group without losing ourselves? After all, even if Hazel doesn’t seem to care much about Black solidarity in the workplace as far as Nella is concerned, she does lead a group to help young Black creatives get their works out there, and she does succeed at reanimating Wagner’s diversity-related efforts, even if the editor in chief thinks of it mainly as a publicity stunt. Is that a net positive?
Now, while the Resistance keep wondering “what’s changing regular Black girls into OBGs?”, Hazel’s place in the story remains a mystery, and not really the entertaining type. They’ve been keeping tabs on her; they know that
Spoiler
her name isn’t really Hazel-May McCallThis is where we finally arrive at the Big Plot Twist – yep, the one that made me go full ‘Huh? WTF’. Hazel’s purpose is revealed. It feels a bit like that meme of a train suddenly hitting that poor, unsuspecting truck.
Spoiler
It’s an Illuminati-level conspiracy to ‘help’ Black women “wade a little easier through the waves of racism without feeling like [they] have to swim so hard” by using bioengineered hair grease that changes their personalities, y’all.…Yeah.
Secretly engineered hair grease that will “make you more amenable when it comes to working for and with white folks”, with the best part of it being, apparently, its ability to “preclude any guilt you may feel from doing so”. And the way it works is by “numbing your ventromedical prefrontal cortex”. I don’t even feel like googling if that makes even a lick of sense.
Oh, and it’s heavily implied that somehow this is all linked to the fact that Richard Wagner, the apparent mastermind behind organizing all of that on a country-wide scale, has a thing for Black women.
Honestly, if you can and are willing to completely ignore how this book may relate to very real but also very US-centric problems, I’d recommend it, if only for that big reveal at the end.
dark
emotional
sad
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:
Yes
Creative, interesting idea that for me didn't find a clear arc. Maybe I missed some foreshadowing (or could have used some) that would tie all the pieces together, but the first half of the book doesn't feel entirely like the same story as the last 3 chapters. Cool 'Us' idea though; looking forward to more from this author
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes