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rachelmanija) wrote2022-09-19 10:15 am
rachelmanija) wrote2022-09-19 10:15 am
The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris
I loved this book so much that it was difficult to review. It was one of my favorites of all the books I read for Bouchercon. (My other favorites were Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby and Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden.)
I would never have read this book if it hadn't been for Bouchercon, as the blurb did not make it sound like something I'd enjoy. It's about the only Black woman working in a low-level publishing job when another Black woman joins the company, and the blurb was all about office politics, social satire, and racism. I really don't like stories about office politics, social satire is extremely hit-or-miss for me, and I'm a hard sell on stories about women fighting each other for scraps.
The Other Black Girl may be the only book I've ever enjoyed that's largely about office politics. However, Harris worked in a publishing house for years, and that happens to be a business I'm familiar with, so the specifics of the office and its politics were dead-on. There's a major plotline about an acclaimed white writer whose very important American novel about the opioid crisis includes a Black addict named Shartricia which is at once darkly hilarious and infuriating.
But it's about so much more than office politics. This book is a wild ride. It uses multiple timelines and POVs to achieve gasp-worthy moments that reminded me of Catriona Ward's The Girl From Rawblood. The structure alone is incredibly skillful and fun to read.
It also achieves the thing I wanted and missed in The Collective, which is a real exploration of moral dilemmas involved in doing something revolutionary. Most books dodge that by picking someone as a villain who doesn't even believe in the goals, and dumping all the bad actions on them. The Other Black Girl doesn't do that. There's villains, but not that sort, and there's people making actual morally ambiguous choices.
Looking at the blurb now, I see that either I missed the headline or they added a new one which gives you a better idea of where it's going. It was a lot of fun for me to go in completely cold, but given that most of you are probably also not into office politics...
The current blurb headline compares it to Get Out and The Stepford Wives. Very accurate! The comparisons that came to my mind were Sorry to Bother You and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If I was pitching it, I'd say, "Jordan Peele does The Devil Wears Prada."
The Other Black Girl is a very original, cross-genre, hard to categorize book with elements of suspense, literary fiction, horror, satire, social commentary, and SFF. It's emotional and funny and very thought-provoking. The central metaphor really worked for me.
The book goes full meta on its readers in a scene where two Black women are talking about hair in an elevator with a white woman. One of the Black women imagines the white woman googling hair terms like "kitchen" and "4C." I felt called out as the white woman watching, I laughed, I googled. (I did know that 4C was a curl type, but not which one; I did not know "kitchen" in hair terms.)
Though this wasn't a book that was written for me, and I'm sure there was lots that went over my head completely, it was a book that got to me on a very personal level. Sometimes you love something in a way that goes beyond how objectively good something is, and I felt this way about The Other Black Girl, though it is in fact objectively good. I'm not Black and my experience of being the only woman in the room or the only Jew in the room is very different from that of being the only Black woman in the room. But this book really spoke to me, both in terms of what it was about and how it was written.
There is a conspiracy to spread a hair product that enables Black women to successfully assimilate into white society. Micro-aggressions no longer bother them. They don't worry all the time. They don't constantly feel rage that they have to repress. They find the perfect words to reassure white people and make them feel comfortable. Shartricia no longer infuriates them. They no longer feel sad and tired and ground down by racism. It just slides off them.
And there can only ever be one of them per office.
I was talking tocahn, to whom I'd recced it only to find that she'd already read it, about its metaphor for assimilation. I will let her speak for herself, but to me it was incredibly powerful. The product insinuates itself into the most intimate of cultural spaces, which in this case is women doing their hair, and turns them into something sinister. It's sometimes forced on people, and sometimes chosen - though never really freely chosen, because in a non-racist society, no one would need it.
What if, you were told, that's the way for your people to advance? What if never getting angry and always saying the thing that made white people feel cool and being "my Black friend" and never fulfilling any one of the bazillion stereotypes (often contradictory!) and generally being perfect in the eyes of white society was the only way?
And how great would it be to not be sad and exhausted and furious anymore? What if you just didn't care? What if you really could do what white men are always advising, and genuinely be able to ignore and not care about everything that crushes your spirit and makes you feel humiliated and angry and gaslit?
Again, I'm not Black and that experience, which is the one portrayed in the book, is very specific and different from mine. But as a member of some other minority groups, man was this relatable.
I was legit shocked that this didn't win the Anthony for best first novel, as it was far and away the best on that ballot and I'd have agonized if I'd had to pick between it and Razorblade Tears, which won best novel. The actual winner for best first novel was Arsenic and Adobo, which was an above-average cozy in a fun setting, and which I enjoyed but come on.
Black writers writing about racism were very well-represented on both the ballot and in winners overall, so I don't think that was the issue. Maybe some voters thought it was too weird, some thought it wasn't really a mystery or suspense novel (fair), and some really wanted to reward something light and fun. But come on.
ETA: I checked the reviews on Amazon and I get it now. This was a really polarizing book, and a lot of people hated the central conceit.They are objectively wrong. But yeah, I think "too weird" was the key issue.
Content notes: Depictions of the subtler kinds of racism throughout. A lot of uncomfortably relatable moments of workplace humiliation, tension, micro-aggressions, gaslighting, etc.
Spoilers for the entire book are fine in comments! You don't need to use rot.13. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read the comments.
I would never have read this book if it hadn't been for Bouchercon, as the blurb did not make it sound like something I'd enjoy. It's about the only Black woman working in a low-level publishing job when another Black woman joins the company, and the blurb was all about office politics, social satire, and racism. I really don't like stories about office politics, social satire is extremely hit-or-miss for me, and I'm a hard sell on stories about women fighting each other for scraps.
The Other Black Girl may be the only book I've ever enjoyed that's largely about office politics. However, Harris worked in a publishing house for years, and that happens to be a business I'm familiar with, so the specifics of the office and its politics were dead-on. There's a major plotline about an acclaimed white writer whose very important American novel about the opioid crisis includes a Black addict named Shartricia which is at once darkly hilarious and infuriating.
But it's about so much more than office politics. This book is a wild ride. It uses multiple timelines and POVs to achieve gasp-worthy moments that reminded me of Catriona Ward's The Girl From Rawblood. The structure alone is incredibly skillful and fun to read.
It also achieves the thing I wanted and missed in The Collective, which is a real exploration of moral dilemmas involved in doing something revolutionary. Most books dodge that by picking someone as a villain who doesn't even believe in the goals, and dumping all the bad actions on them. The Other Black Girl doesn't do that. There's villains, but not that sort, and there's people making actual morally ambiguous choices.
Looking at the blurb now, I see that either I missed the headline or they added a new one which gives you a better idea of where it's going. It was a lot of fun for me to go in completely cold, but given that most of you are probably also not into office politics...
The current blurb headline compares it to Get Out and The Stepford Wives. Very accurate! The comparisons that came to my mind were Sorry to Bother You and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If I was pitching it, I'd say, "Jordan Peele does The Devil Wears Prada."
The Other Black Girl is a very original, cross-genre, hard to categorize book with elements of suspense, literary fiction, horror, satire, social commentary, and SFF. It's emotional and funny and very thought-provoking. The central metaphor really worked for me.
The book goes full meta on its readers in a scene where two Black women are talking about hair in an elevator with a white woman. One of the Black women imagines the white woman googling hair terms like "kitchen" and "4C." I felt called out as the white woman watching, I laughed, I googled. (I did know that 4C was a curl type, but not which one; I did not know "kitchen" in hair terms.)
Though this wasn't a book that was written for me, and I'm sure there was lots that went over my head completely, it was a book that got to me on a very personal level. Sometimes you love something in a way that goes beyond how objectively good something is, and I felt this way about The Other Black Girl, though it is in fact objectively good. I'm not Black and my experience of being the only woman in the room or the only Jew in the room is very different from that of being the only Black woman in the room. But this book really spoke to me, both in terms of what it was about and how it was written.
There is a conspiracy to spread a hair product that enables Black women to successfully assimilate into white society. Micro-aggressions no longer bother them. They don't worry all the time. They don't constantly feel rage that they have to repress. They find the perfect words to reassure white people and make them feel comfortable. Shartricia no longer infuriates them. They no longer feel sad and tired and ground down by racism. It just slides off them.
And there can only ever be one of them per office.
I was talking to
cahn, to whom I'd recced it only to find that she'd already read it, about its metaphor for assimilation. I will let her speak for herself, but to me it was incredibly powerful. The product insinuates itself into the most intimate of cultural spaces, which in this case is women doing their hair, and turns them into something sinister. It's sometimes forced on people, and sometimes chosen - though never really freely chosen, because in a non-racist society, no one would need it.What if, you were told, that's the way for your people to advance? What if never getting angry and always saying the thing that made white people feel cool and being "my Black friend" and never fulfilling any one of the bazillion stereotypes (often contradictory!) and generally being perfect in the eyes of white society was the only way?
And how great would it be to not be sad and exhausted and furious anymore? What if you just didn't care? What if you really could do what white men are always advising, and genuinely be able to ignore and not care about everything that crushes your spirit and makes you feel humiliated and angry and gaslit?
Again, I'm not Black and that experience, which is the one portrayed in the book, is very specific and different from mine. But as a member of some other minority groups, man was this relatable.
I was legit shocked that this didn't win the Anthony for best first novel, as it was far and away the best on that ballot and I'd have agonized if I'd had to pick between it and Razorblade Tears, which won best novel. The actual winner for best first novel was Arsenic and Adobo, which was an above-average cozy in a fun setting, and which I enjoyed but come on.
Black writers writing about racism were very well-represented on both the ballot and in winners overall, so I don't think that was the issue. Maybe some voters thought it was too weird, some thought it wasn't really a mystery or suspense novel (fair), and some really wanted to reward something light and fun. But come on.
ETA: I checked the reviews on Amazon and I get it now. This was a really polarizing book, and a lot of people hated the central conceit.
Content notes: Depictions of the subtler kinds of racism throughout. A lot of uncomfortably relatable moments of workplace humiliation, tension, micro-aggressions, gaslighting, etc.
Spoilers for the entire book are fine in comments! You don't need to use rot.13. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read the comments.
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I hate The Office and similar shows, I hate shows about rich people backstabbing each other in corporate settings, and I hate most books about professors trying to get tenure.
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It wasn't until I heard the Talking Scared podcast ep Harris did that I went "wait, this is genre? this is horror, or horror-adjacent??"
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I never heard of Talking Scared and now I'm definitely checking out at least that episode! Are there others you'd especially rec to me?
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There've been a bunch of very good ones. The Carmen Maria Machado interview is excellent; the interviewer (Neil McRobert) starts by talking about how unequipped he as a cishet white guy is to be talking about In The Dream House and I kind of winced because it felt like he went on a bit too long about how anxious he was about screwing up and I went: oh no, this is where you disappear up your own self-consciousness and make it all about you, isn't it? And then he proceeds to do an outstanding, thoughtful interview that explores the interconnections between her non-fiction and fiction work.
Oh, loved the ep with Gretchen Felker-Martin. I remember the Gemma Files and Caitlin Starling ones as good too.
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One of the many things I think the book captures so well, in addition to everything you mentioned up above, is the way prejudice gives people such a short memory: all the white people in the office seem to experience Hazel's diversity efforts as FRESH and NEW and TOTALLY DIFFERENT, ignoring the fact that Nella had tried to do the exact same thing months ago. It feels like another version of the way Hollywood is, say, constantly re-learning that Black-led movies can be major successes or that women can be funny. It's exactly the kind of intensely aggravating "slide back to the status quo" kind of thinking that the hair product offers relief from, because Hazel will just never get tired of it.
Office politics: Nella's boss putting her on the spot to talk about her feelings about Shartricia directly to Colin, with no real backup, is such a horrifically believable "I want to curl up inside myself and die" moment.
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*nods*
Office politics: Nella's boss putting her on the spot to talk about her feelings about Shartricia directly to Colin, with no real backup, is such a horrifically believable "I want to curl up inside myself and die" moment.
omg, that was just TERRIBLE. I felt so bad for Nella! And like you say, so believable. (it made me very relieved that I work in a tech job, honestly)
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Right! It's mind-boggling.
One of the many things I think the book captures so well, in addition to everything you mentioned up above, is the way prejudice gives people such a short memory
Yes, that was so well-done, and not a topic I've seen explored that much before.
Nella's boss putting her on the spot to talk about her feelings about Shartricia directly to Colin, with no real backup, is such a horrifically believable "I want to curl up inside myself and die" moment.
Oh God yes. And she can't refuse, so she has to either lie (and then face the consequences when the book comes out) or tell the truth (and face those consequences right now.)
***
Re: ***
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But I actually do like office politics, which is why I picked the book up (I'd seen a blurb about it as an office politics book) and then was totally shocked by the plot! :D
I agree it's a really interesting metaphor for assimilation, especially because of this:
What if, you were told, that's the way for your people to advance? What if never getting angry and always saying the thing that made white people feel cool and being "my Black friend" and never fulfilling any one of the bazillion stereotypes (often contradictory!) and generally being perfect in the eyes of white society was the only way?
...which (in my non-Black-but-also-with-some-experience-being-the-minority) IS what people are told, at least subliminally, and why those early scenes with Nella and Hazel are just so painful, because Hazel can do it and Nella won't, and and and.
(I think it's fair not to call this a mystery novel, and while I think I'd call it a suspense novel, I can see that a voter in this milieu might not think so.)
But yeah, I think "too weird" was the key issue.
That is so strange to me! But then I like weird :)
ALSO. SHARTRICIA.
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Yes, you should!
I was so surprised by the plot! I started wondering at some point and then hoooooly shit!
..which (in my non-Black-but-also-with-some-experience-being-the-minority) IS what people are told, at least subliminally, and why those early scenes with Nella and Hazel are just so painful, because Hazel can do it and Nella won't, and and and.
Oh yes, I absolutely think that's what people are told. And we shouldn't be, and we shouldn't have to be, and it's impossible anyway. "But what if it was possible?" is such a powerful question to explore.
FUCKING SHARTRICIA.
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Yes, exactly! It's such an interesting question that the book asks. (And even before knowing the twist, it was really interesting to watch Hazel and Nella when I "just" thought it was a book about assimilation and succeeding in a white man's world.)
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And such an effective and biting metaphor! Lead Conditioners, argh.
The office politics were so painfully on point that they made me not want to entertain any sudden career changes to publishing.
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The metaphor is so good.
It definitely did not make me want to work in publishing.
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(alas the library does not have Razorblade Tears in ebook so that might have to wait a bit longer)
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