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Darling readers, it will come as a surprise to few that life plus our Kindle Unlimited subscriptions and life got in the way of our regularly scheduled reviews, but we’ll catch up and get you all that was promised in the days to come!  

I’m not sure what I expected from The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, but it more than delivered.  Both Anne Bogel and Jamie B. Golden said to read this amazing book about the publishing industry and the complex issues of race, so you can just stop reading now and grab a copy!  In this engrossing story, Nella has been the only Black employee at her publishing house for two years (aka the whole time), until Hazel shows up.  Nella and Hazel are bonding and supporting each other, until a series of things happen and suddenly, they are clearly not BFFs.  This is all I remembered from the marketing copy / recommendations, so you can imagine my surprise when the story takes a thriller-ish turn and threatening notes start showing up.  Nella’s career is at stake and something weird is going on, and Hazel just has to be connected, according to Nella at least.  

I was not ready for several of the twists and turns this book took me on, and that epilogue!  Wow.  The Other Black Girl is layered and detailed and so well paced.  I was absolutely the basic white woman looking up some of the Black hair talk and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and the pretty direct invitation in the text to use an Internet search engine to inform myself.  Here is the part I can’t stop thinking about – the dichotomy of how these two women think about code switching when in majority culture.  I am probably overly simplifying this, but considering how you physically present in a space, if and which filters you apply to yourself (and not just the way you speak) when entering into a situation, and just how honest to be about real life stuff.  I think many of us face versions of this as we go about our day switching “hats” as we switch environments.  What the (not Black) reader gets to see through the window as these characters walk through the story, and presumably most Black people and people of color, especially women face, is so much more than I have to think about and the idea is just exhausting.  THIS is the work of reading fiction and how it helps build empathy in us as readers as we experience the characters working through the plot. I am so very grateful for authors and teachers like Harris.  

I am so hopeful for more amazing things from Harris.  While The Other Black Girl is her debut novel, she’s published essays and book reviews and spent three years working in book publishing and it shows in her descriptions of the industry and her phenomenal writing!  I’m giving The Other Black Girl four solid stars.  I’m still thinking and dissecting and wondering long I’ll be stuck in the rabbit hole I’ll fall down if I look up author interviews.  

What’s a title that was so much more than what you didn’t know you wanted?

~Nikki

What happens when a debut author writes about the industry they have been working in long before becoming an author? An amazing, showstopping, emotional rollercoaster of a New York Times bestselling first novel, that’s what! Zakiya Dalila Harris lives in Brooklyn with her husband and plant collection, got her MFA in creative writing from The New School, attended The University of North Carolina for undergrad, and grew up in Connecticut. Harris’s other writings have been published in such prestigious periodicals as Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Guernica, the Rumpus, and the New York Times.  Hulu is currently in production for a TV adaptation of The Other Black Girl. And if that doesn’t give you another reason to go pick up a copy and read this book, I don’t know what else we have to say.

I have so many feelings about this book. It has made me feel such a lack of diverse friendships in my life because I, too, had to rely on google for the education on different curl types and their struggles. Women talk about hair all the time. It’s a thing for everyone, and we can all complain and be joyous about it together. I was also intrigued by the dynamic of Nella having Hazel meet her white live-in boyfriend, Owen. Nella was weirded out, jealous, and concerned all at the same time. I have read multiple reviews on Goodreads from Black readers and it seems that many of them find this satire very problematic in its portrayal of Blackness and Black women. It’s unclear if the readers knew it was more satire than thriller and if that was known if that would have cleared up their issues with the book.

I can only give my opinion of it and, thriller or satire, I thoroughly enjoyed this four star read. I want to share one quote that I find is still really important, even though it was ‘said’ by fictional blacktivist, YouTube star, Jesse Watson: “With heightened awareness of cultural sensitivity comes great responsibility. If we’re not careful, ‘diversity’ might become an item people start checking off a list and nothing more—a shallow, shadowy thing with but one dimension.” And, darling readers, that’s what we’re hoping to avoid.

~Ashley

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