As I mentioned yesterday, I have mainly been reading light detective fiction over the past few months. However, some weeks ago I did bestir myselfto read something a little different, when I noticed The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris, in the library. A novel about publishing and race? Yes please!
It is the story of Nella, a 26-year-old editorial assistant who is the only Black woman at Wagner Books in New York; politically active, she tries to raise her white colleagues’ interest in diversity with no success. She is initially delighted when another Black woman, Hazel, is recruited: finally things are changing and she has a friend and ally! But Hazel is not all that she seems, and while she charms the office Nella receives anonymous notes warning her to leave Wagner and increasingly alienates herself from her boss and co-workers. What is going on?
(There will be spoilers!)
I found this novel frustrating because it is so close to being a really brilliant work. The micro-aggressions that Nella has to bear from her white colleagues, their insensitivity and self-congratulatory behaviour struck this white reader as uncomfortably accurate. Nella’s downfall is brought about by her honest assessment of a novel about a Black opoid addict written by a white man, a novel Wagner is keen to publish as it will make them look good but which is, in Nella’s eyes, packed with racial and gender stereotyping to an unacceptable degree. The publication process of this novel brings out the smug worst in the white editors and Harris has a lot of fun with this at their expense. She also shows very powerfully how wearying it is to be in such an environment, where you can never really stop being Black and just get on with stuff in the way white people take for granted. The underlying idea of OBGs was clever, and I thought that the reasons why young Black women bought into it – why shouldn’t they be ambitious? Why shouldn’t they have an easy time of it? – compelling and sympathetic. The Other Black Girl is also sharp about social class, about envy, about that feeling that you’re being pushed aside by someone but cannot quite put your finger on anything that they’ve done.
The trouble was, for me, that while the satire was nicely done there were weaknesses in terms of plot and character. The role of hair grease in the plot was a bit unconvincing, but OK. More problematic: the build-up was slow but there was no menace. Women are fleeing and going into hiding, but nothing that terrible ever happened to anyone (one character was abducted but then released unharmed, that was it). The worst-case scenario for Nella, if she resisted the OBG network, seemed to be she’d leave Wagner and get another job somewhere else, which – is not that bad? I’d also have liked the characters to have had a little more depth. Overall, it struck me as very clever idea by a talented new writer, but that it hadn’t quite developed far enough into fiction.
Yet – it has stayed with me longer than other, more competently structured novels. So I am looking forward to Harris’s next book.