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Summary
Summary
Now a Hulu Original Series
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A Good Morning America and Read with Marie Claire Book Club Pick and a People Best Book of Summer
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Time , The Washington Post , Harper's Bazaar , Entertainment Weekly , Marie Claire , Bustle , BuzzFeed , Parade , Goodreads , Fortune , and BBC
Named a Best Book of 2021 by Time , The Washington Post , Esquire , Vogue , Entertainment Weekly , The Boston Globe , Harper's Bazaar , and NPR
Urgent, propulsive, and sharp as a knife, The Other Black Girl is an electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there's a lot more at stake than just her career.
A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Harris debuts with a dazzling, darkly humorous story about the publishing industry and the challenges faced by a Black employee. Nella Rogers, an overworked editorial assistant, navigates white privilege and microaggressions as the only Black person in her department at New York City trade publisher Wagner Books. That is until the arrival of chic Hazel-May McCall. Nella withstands being mistaken for Hazel, "the Other Black Girl," and reviewing a problematic manuscript written by a bestselling white author with horribly one-dimensional depictions of a Black single mom. Many of the company's higher-ups have the trappings of material success (Ivy League pedigrees, renovated summer homes), and their attempts to cultivate diversity fall flat, notably with the publisher's "Diversity Town Halls" and its sheepish attempts to deal with racism ("the elephant in the room," Harris writes, "No one really knew what the elephant was. Or where the elephant was"). When Nella receives an anonymous note reading "Leave Wagner. Now," her hopes for a career at the company begin to crumble. Meanwhile, Hazel, seemingly undeterred by office politics, is not the ally she appears to be. While the novel overflows with witty dialogue and skillfully drawn characters, its biggest strength lies in its penetrating critique of gatekeeping in the publishing industry and the deleterious effects it can have on Black editors. This insightful, spellbinding book packs a heavy punch. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (June)
Booklist Review
Nella Rogers lives on high alert as a young Black woman in a very white publishing company, where she is underpaid and desperate to make an impression. All her life she's lived with the reality that "we have to work twice as hard, always," feeling like an outsider in both white and Black worlds. When "the other Black girl," Hazel-May McCall, starts at the company, Nella is relieved to have a co-worker who gets it; she even gains the confidence to confront a white author about the racist portrayal of the only Black character in his book. The aftermath of the confrontation sets Nella wondering whether Hazel really has her back, and anonymous notes telling Nella to leave the company fuel her growing unease. Racist behavior in the workplace, white colleagues' awkward attempts to pretend it doesn't exist, and the exhaustion of being Black in white spaces are all encapsulated in a pitch-perfect way by Harris, whose introspective Nella will stay with readers. The story takes a fantastical turn that doesn't land quite as well as the office-politics aspect of the tale, but, still, this compelling debut thriller will be in demand; a must for public libraries.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up--As the only Black employee at Wagner Books, 26-year-old Nella Rogers has always felt alone in her workplace, trying and failing at every attempt to bring greater awareness to the publishing house where she is an editorial assistant. When Hazel, a Black girl from Harlem who initially offers similar thoughts on a troublesome manuscript, appears, it feels to Nella like a leap forward, until Hazel begins following the company line and Nella starts receiving notes threatening her to leave Wagner. The story starts slowly but builds quickly as Nella tries to figure out who is leaving her the notes, while watching Hazel become the office's star. This main story line is interrupted with historical segments that, while occasionally referencing figures who might not be familiar to readers, illustrates an industry where tokenism remains all too common. VERDICT A debut novel that provides a look at what it can be like to face insurmountable obstacles in the workplace and a narrative that continues to build to a satisfactory and surprising conclusion. A good choice for general purchase.--Betsy Fraser, Calgary P.L., Canada
Guardian Review
There's a loneliness in being the only one; it resonates throughout Zakiya Dalila Harris's imaginative and audacious debut novel. The heroine is Nella Rogers, an ambitious black editorial assistant at Wagner Books, a prestigious American publishing house where white Ivy League graduates with trust funds take on low-wage editorial salaries in order to ascend the corporate ladder. When Nella joins, it's been well over two decades since Wagner's brilliant but scandal-engulfed black editor fled New York City, desperately scratching her itching scalp - a cleverly placed hint of the way Harris's novel will use the importance of hair products in the lives of black women to startling effect. Nella represents a new, younger generation of would-be editors hoping to infuse cultural diversity and equity into an industry that has historically excluded people of colour. She's been there for two years, and she's ripe for a promotion. But her boss implies that Nella's focus is off-kilter: "I wish you'd put half the effort you put into those extracurricular diversity meetings into working on the core requirements." The work environment at Wagner is one where "open-space assistants" subsist on leftovers and fruit while their superiors dine at swanky restaurants and vacation in summer homes. Career stagnation is both a risk and a reality. Enter a fresh "OBG" or Other Black Girl, Hazel-May McCall, smelling distinctly of Brown Buttah, a fragant cocoa butter hair product that's also a staple in Nella's haircare regimen. The girl had a wide, symmetrical face, and two almond-colored eyes perfectly spaced between a Lena Horne nose and a generous forehead. Her skin was a shade or two darker than Nella's maple complexion, falling somewhere between hickory and pecan. And her locs - each one as thick as a bubble tea straw and longer than her arms - started out as a deep brown, then turned blonde as they continued past her ears. She'd gathered a bunch and piled them on top of her head in a bun; the locs that hadn't made it hung loosely around the nape of her neck. This passage is telling for many reasons, not least of which is the importance of skin colour and hair in African American culture, a holdover from slavery and colonisation. Nella grew up with permed hair, but has gone natural with partial success. Unlike Hazel, she doesn't yet possess the confidence or knowledge to finesse her natural do in a conservative workplace. Still, Nella's happy to have another black woman in the office and quickly takes Hazel into her confidence, showing her how to manage their fickle bosses. But shortly after Hazel's arrival, Nella starts to receive anonymous threatening notes telling her to leave Wagner Books. And here begins the kind of office intrigue that's bound to make The Other Black Girl a book to discuss. Hazel comes across initially as perfection itself, with a handsome, well-connected artist boyfriend and a winning personality that allows her to code-switch fluidly: speaking in a manner designed to assuage white anxiety around people of colour, and playing up her down-to-earth, Harlem-born black activist credentials in a way that makes the white staff feel comfortably "woke". Nella's chance at a promotion withers when she gives honest feedback on a novel written by one of Wagner's bestselling white male authors that features an ill-conceived pregnant black opioid addict named Shartricia Daniels. When asked for her take on the book, Hazel doesn't object to the stereotypes. There are moments when The Other Black Girl feels like two novels woven together as one: a satire that uproots the insidious ways race and class merge in office dialogue and politics, and a thriller with echoes of the great science fiction writer Octavia Butler. I wish Harris had been given more room to set up consistent signposts, and to delve more deeply into some of the secondary characters and subplots for greater clarity and balance. But it is true that daring novels often break with form and take chances. Readers should relish this glimpse into the publishing world and its original take on black professional women striving to hold on to their authentic selves and their tresses.
Kirkus Review
In Harris' slyly brilliant debut, a young editorial assistant is thrilled when her glaringly White employer hires another Black woman--but it soon becomes clear there's something sinister about the new girl, who isn't what she seems. Young, literary, and ambitious, Nella Rogers has spent the last two years as an editorial assistant at Wagner Books, a premier New York City publishing house, where, for the entirety of her (somewhat stalled) tenure, she's been the only Black person in the room. How she feels about this depends on the day--for all her frustrations, she can't help but be a little proud of her outsider status--but still, she's excited when she detects another Black girl on her floor: finally, someone else who gets it. And she does, at first. Wagner's newest editorial assistant, Hazel-May McCall, cool and self-possessed, is quick to befriend Nella, echoing her frustrations with the never-spoken racial politics of their office, encouraging her to speak up. But it doesn't take long for Nella to realize there's something off about Hazel, even if she can't quite put her finger on it. There's something weird about how easily she fits in among the higher-ups at Wagner, about the way she's instantly and universally beloved by top editors, the way her story--born in Harlem, daughter of civil rights activists, a grandfather who died protesting--exactly matches their ideas about Blackness in a way that Nella's middle-class suburban childhood never will. And then, shortly after Hazel's arrival, the first anonymous note arrives on Nella's desk: "Leave Wagner Now." Hazel? And if not Hazel, then who? Nella begins searching for answers--and in the process, finds herself at the center of a dangerous conspiracy that runs far deeper than she ever could have known. If it sounds like a moralistic sledgehammer of a novel--well, it would be if Harris were any less good. In her hands, though, it's a nuanced page-turner, as sharp as it is fun. A biting social satire--cum-thriller; dark, playful, and brimming with life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Harris's compelling debut is part satire and part thriller, topped off with a good measure of social horror. Nella Rogers is an underpaid, overstressed editorial assistant struggling to gain recognition and respect as a Black woman at a high-powered New York publishing house. When another Black woman, coolly confident Hazel-May McCall, joins the team, Nella is thrilled. Nella's initial elation sours, however, as she soon discovers that Hazel is laser-focused on upward mobility, not solidarity. Primary narrator Aja Naomi King fully communicates the office's unsettling atmosphere, where sly microaggressions are pronounced with sweet smiles. King's measured portrayal of Nella is masterful, bringing out her infectious passion as well as her helpless anger and increasing despair. King deftly brings out the nuances in Nella and Hazel's speech, seamlessly code-switching from silkily professional to relaxed and casual. Narrators Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Heather Alicia Simms, and Bahni Turpin complement King's performance, voicing the points of view of other Black women in Nella's circle, all of whom endured constant trials as they sought success. VERDICT This thought-provoking novel will appeal to listeners looking for a socially conscious, horror-laced version of Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada.--Sarah Hashimoto, Jackson Dist. Lib., MI