The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalia Harris - Book Review

I applaud Zakiya Dalia Harris for her debut novel, this book kept me on the toes of wanting to know more. I was fortunate enough to be given the hardcover book for Christmas, and with that, I was given the wonderful book cover of an afro pick on a yellow cover. I must admit, at first I thought it was an abstract image of a Black person and the parts that were snapped is due to the weight of racism our protagonist has faced at her job. I later realised I was looking too deep into it.

Meet Nella, a twenty-six editorial assistant. She is the only Black employee working at Wager Books and has to experience microaggressions from her White colleagues. This is why she is thrilled when Hazel walks in, making Nella no longer the only Black employee. But what starts as a nice friendship soon develops into something that Nella couldn’t imagine. Nella starts receiving notes at work threatening her to quit her job, and she believes it is The Other Black Girl, Hazel. 

As we know Dalia Harris is a new author with this being her debut novel, something I was shocked about because the formatting and the flow of the story seem like she has been publishing books for years. I loved that when she was writing Nella’s story, it was in the third person, but then sometimes we went into the eyes of another person and the point of view changed to the first person. 

Doing this made me scream with happiness because it was so cleverly done and made me need to read the novel to find out who this person was. 

Although the publishing world is slowly becoming better, most times they are very favourable towards white writers, especially White men (James Patterson, Donna Tartt) and it was nice to see this book show how white men get away with leaving racist stereotypes in their books and how the Black employees have to stay quiet but if they do say something about it, their White colleagues will state how they’ve made the meeting uncomfortable. All of this is something that needs to be changed in the real world, if a Black employee states a book from a White author has some racist undertones, listen and change it and do better. 

The ending of the novel is something I still can’t completely wrap my mind around, as it takes this Thriller into a slight Sci-Fi genre as well. Yet, saying that the ending could also be seen as a metaphor for how Black people, especially Black women have to change their persona when going to a space that is very white and thus becomes numb as they cannot behave with their true personality. 

However, it still left a lot open and I feel like there are a lot of unanswered questions. 

With all of that, I believe giving 4/5 stars is the best outcome because I still really enjoyed this novel due to the genius formatting ideas and how this is quite educational if people would just listen to it.