One of the best scenes in The Other Black Girl takes place in a salon, with dozens of women of different ages trying out new coiffures. And it was exhausting. But when Nella begins receiving threatening notes at work, and cracks appear in what shed hoped would be an idyllic work-wife friendship, Nella begins to suspect a more sinister force is trying to derail her careerand unravel her life in ways she could never have imagined. Now that the game is out, we know Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has a post-credits scene for players to watch. I dont want to give too much away, but I think it spoke to me so much because it really hits home how many spaces dont allow Black women to really show up as their authentic selves. So that element was was pretty on point. In the Epilogue, Nella becomes a Lead Conditioner who arrives in Portland, Oregon to fix Shani. Fox News' sudden firing of Tucker Carlson may have come down to one I couldnt turn the pages fast enough in the second half of the book. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, shes thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. Zakiya Dalila Harris began writing The Other Black Girl while working as an assistant editor at Knopf Doubleday, and her textured observations of the overwhelmingly white world of publishing, and the insidious racism lurking therein, laid the groundwork for a tale that grows darker and more surreal as the narrative curls toward a shocking finale. One day, a new assistant starts, who is also black - Hazel. Was there any awkwardness with writing a book about racial bias within publishing as a former publishing professional? Nella attends an event Hazel organized at Curl Central, a natural hair cafe, where Hazel announces a joint initiative with Wagner Books owner Richard Wagner to create more equitable hiring practices in publishing. The two women become friends, and Nella vents about a book shes editing called Pins and Needles, which features a racist caricature of a Black woman. I mean, it's really cool to hear you say that. Meanwhile, occasional chapters seem to rise out of nowhere, but they are actual plot thickeners, devices that will ultimately take The Other Black Girl out of the realm of "office novel" and into another genre entirely, and finally toward a kind of sad and wholly earned brilliance. I could see KiKi Lane for both Nella and Hazel. How did it set the stage for what was to come? That is, until Nella starts to receive threatening notes to leave Wagner and she realizes Hazel may not be who she seems. Were you surprised she took it? 'Black Girl Missing' Ending Explained - Was Lauren Baker Found Alive? She works extremely hard and is very dilligent, breaking through her boss's icy exterior and spending extra time on 'diversity' initiatives at her work. But after getting to know the main characters, Nella and Hazel, I was left feeling that it also was largely about the power of female friendship and the different ways people navigate the Black experience. I say hi to the shop owner because I don't want to be seen or assumed that I'm going to steal something. Oh my God. Glamour: The story is so original. Unapologetic. It was George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and COVID-19, obviously. Shes driven and determined to make her mark in the publishing industry and tries not to let the microaggressions and outright racism of her colleagues at times weigh her down. I absolutely love books that cover workplace politics and drama, and this was spot on. Without nuance, the novel could too easily be read as an exaggeration of reality, which reduces the urgency of issues it calls out. What If a Whole Stand-up Special Were About Peanut Butter? throughout this book, I really wanted readers to question their own prejudices, their own kind of analysis of certain interactions. Marketed as "The Devil Wears Prada meets Get Out," Zakiya Dalila Harris' new thriller novel, The Other Black Girl, has been one of the publishing industry's most talked-about and buzziest releases of 2021.Harris, who quit her job as an editorial assistant at the revered PRH imprint Knopf to write this book, has endeavored to address the racist history of book publishing through the . Every few years a novel comes along and infiltrates the conversation in such a way that the title becomes so pervasive that even nonreaders have heard of it. 'Other Black girls' are the ones that are in cahoots with white people. They create imposter syndrome. Read an excerpt from Emiko Jean's new novel, here, then dive in with us throughout the month. It's a love letter to Black women and an . By the time I was writing the first draft, I already knew that publishing wasnt for me. I also knew that Hazel would be some kind of robot. A twist fails if you havent sold the character or the world enough. At one point, Nella describes the drama about a junior staffer getting their own office (rather than an open cubicle) and I laughed to myself because I definitely remember discussions like that happening back in the day. You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. And so many people were commenting on the coolness of it. Oh, congrats. 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.