It took me about a month to let this one simmer in the back of my mind before ultimately deciding to round up to four stars. The small thing that threw me at first is overshadowed by how much the ending has stuck with me, and how powerful the implications of that ending are.
This one starts out pretty simply with our main character Nella, who works in the otherwise all-white workplace of an influential publishing house based in NYC, excited that another Black woman has been hired as an editorial assistant. The prospect of having another Black person, especially a woman around her own age, is relieving and Nella feels cautiously optimistic. She yearns to have someone to share her experiences with in an environment full of mostly well-meaning white people (and some not-so) who nevertheless make Nella’s professional life one where she has to step carefully in every situation, and consider things her white colleagues never have to worry about.
Things take a turn though, as what started out to be a promising interaction between her and her new co-worker, Hazel begins to turn . . . weird. Hazel runs hot and cold at times to Nella, and quickly becomes the office darling at a stunning pace, accomplishing things Nella has been carefully working towards for years in a matter of months. There are also weird interactions with Hazel that Hazel is always quick to explain away. Despite Hazel’s profession of solidarity with her, Nella begins to wonder if Hazel has more sinister motives. Going beyond that would ruin it so I’ll stop there, unless you want to click the spoiler tag below, which I don’t recommend.
Unspoilery, I think this is a good novel, and worth checking out. I found the exploration of what it was like to be Black in an overwhelmingly white workplace to be very interesting (and frustrating), and I particularly loved that that workplace was a publisher, because it was fascinating to see the behind the scenes view of that. I also thought Harris did a great job not only with Nella’s character, but with bringing in slowly the creeping sense of something being Wrong.
And now some spoilery thoughts. SPOILERS The underlying weirdness here turns out to be that there are these Other Black Girls (OBGs) beginning to proliferate in workspaces and there is a Resistance growing alongside it as well. The OBGs are the product of a chemical formula invented by the wife of the head of Nella’s publishing company. The purpose seems to be to allow Black women to move more easily in white spaces, and not feel bad about what they have to do while they are there. Nella is eventually pushed out because there can only be one Other Black Girl in an office in order for them to be able to function fully. I liked the implications of this, that white supremacy forces Black people to compete against each other and act against their own interests, I even didn’t mind that a white man was essentially behind it all, despite the stated purpose of the substance. There is an interesting ambiguity in the substance (which is being spread by hair products marketed to Black women) in that it does make it easier for these women to accomplish their goals in a white supremacist world, but it also makes them give up their identity and abandon empathy and community in the process. The very end of the book, in which we see that Nella has been converted to an OBG, upset me at first because I didn’t want Nella to fail, but we know that this must be something she chose, which means she also chose to give up the good fight of true equality, and just lay down her burdens instead in an act of what is simultaneously race betrayal and self-care. This is an indictment of our culture, that Black women should have to choose between mental health and sanity and a happy, healthy workplace environment, and success professionally or socially; that it is essentially impossible to have both. That’s damning.
My problem with this twist is that I thought the actual mechanics of it were silly, and the weird (unbelievable) nature of this “scientific” formula was just too much for me to believe in. I wish the origin of the OBGs had been more nebulous or mysterious/horrific in nature. The fact that it was supposedly created by an actual scientist cheapened it for me END SPOILERS.
[3.5 stars]