Recommendation: "The Other Black Girl" by Zakiya Dalila Harris

The novel The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris has deservedly garnered commercial success, and a Google search will deliver many reviews. So let's just start with a few quotes, and, after the page break, some of my comments with ****SPOILERS****.

"[Hazel had] moved from channeling her inner Baraka to her inner Barack--from confrontational to compassionate--in less than 60 seconds." @zakiya_harris, "The Other Black Girl," p 56

— Ayman Hossam Fadel (@aymanfadel) February 10, 2022

In this fictional discussion about the decision to cast Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi & the hypothetical casting of Billy Dee Williams as Mozart, @zakiya_harris in "The Other Black Girl" lands on this week's leader in institutionalized gender & racial hierarchy, #Harvard pic.twitter.com/oYmCdJo2BU

— Ayman Hossam Fadel (@aymanfadel) February 10, 2022

Since this is a horror novel, I recommend that, if you think you might read it, stop here. ******SPOILERS ***** 

For over a century, black Americans have documented and worked against anti-blackness in United States media productions. This novel portrays a fictional, even supernatural, reason for that, while hinting at a much more radical, depressing reason.

Nella, the novel's most frequent protagonist, works as an editorial assistant in a leading New York City publishing house and is the only black employee. One of its clients has submitted a draft of a novel with an anti-black portrayal of a black Ohioan woman. Nella attempts to squash this aspect of the novel, but is undermined by Hazel, the newly-hired second black person in the office.

Something similar happened in the same publishing house decades earlier. A black author and a black editor teamed up to produce a novel of authentic black American experience. When the white supremacist forces of publishing pressured both to rein in their expression, the editor refused and was cast out of publishing and went off the grid in fear for her safety. The author, on the other hand, compromised with white supremacy and went on to have a lengthy, lucrative career. Yet she never again produced work which challenged white supremacy, and she deteriorated spiritually to the point where her solid black husband left her and she became the mistress of the white owner of the publishing agency (the plantation).

One of the author's friends was a chemist who developed hair care products with psychoactive ingredients which helped black creatives compromise with white supremacy. Fast forwarding to Nella and Hazel, Hazel encourages Nella to use customized hair care products sold at her relative's hair care salon/bar in Harlem.

In the most dramatic scene, Nella confronts Hazel, who acknowledges her mission of undermining black solidarity and making it easier for black creatives to gather the crumbs white supremacy has left for them without the guilt of selling-out. Nella then realizes that she has in fact already been compromising, that this compromising had begun before Hazel had been hired and that it was not the result of supernatural hair care products Hazel had gifted to her, which she had not been using.

Hazel had succeeded in preventing Nella from becoming a challenge to white supremacy.

Of course, the publishing house, Hazel and the compromised author don't attend Klu Klux Klan rallies. They support diversity initiatives. They encourage young, black artists. They wear natural hair and elegant scarves. "Representation matters," a phrase I've used as a tag in this blog, becomes the upper limit of achievement, and material reality for the masses of black people is neglected.

Read the book. When you navigate office politics in whatever industry or profession you work, decide whether your compromises are the result of personal care products or fatigue, cowardice, greed and ambition.

P.S. The soft-power mechanisms of white supremacy need talented non-whites. I am not able at this time to articulate exactly why, but think about the Humans of the CIA video & other efforts of the military/industrial/carceral/etc wings of the government and private sector make to appear intersectional. Nella's publishing company needs talented black women like Nella and Hazel to do things that recruits from elite schools' College Republicans clubs can't do.

Another literary example of this is John Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. British spies, the pinnacle of imperialism's evil doers, aren't knuckle-dragging, crude racists. They are well-educated, talented blue-bloods or blue-blood-adjacent without money who want to climb into importance and proximity to the ruling elite.