I'm Ann Bocock and welcome to "Between the Covers".

My guest is Zakiya Dalila Harris.

"The Other Black Girl" is her debut novel and it's a debut novel that in its first week on sale, lands her on the New York Times Best Seller list.

The book can't be pigeonholed into a category.

It is a social commentary, it's a thriller, it's edgy, it's full of twists and it will do what books are supposed to do; it will make you think.

At its core, "The Other Black Girl" is a story of race in America.

The book is set in the New York publishing world, coincidentally where Zakiya Dalila Harris worked before this novel was published.

Zakiya, welcome to "Between the Covers".

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

It's such an honor to be here.

I am so excited to talk to you about the book, "The Other Black Girl", but before we get into the story, I wanna look at your story because here we have this unsettling riveting book and you worked in publishing.

So it's not like this is biting the hand that feeds you because you're writing a pretty harsh book about publishing, and what happens?

There's a bidding war for the book.

So Zakiya, what gives?

Oh gosh, it's so strange as I look back on it.

Yeah, I mean, like my main character in "The Other Black Girl", I really wanted to work in publishing for, not a forever dream, My forever dream was to write, but I did my MFA at The New School in nonfiction writing and really loved talking about the works with people, talking about writing and the craft.

And so I applied for multiple jobs and internships and I was able to get a job at Knopf Doubleday in 2016 right after I finished my MFA.

From there, it was living the editorial assistant life with the tote bags and being in Manhattan and I enjoyed a lot of parts of it, but there are also other parts that were very glaringly obvious with like the fact that I was the only young black woman working in editorial full time and looking around the table and not seeing faces like my own was very strange, but also was not that new to me because I grew up in Connecticut in a very white neighborhood.

I went to mostly white elementary school.

And so I was good at talking the talk, being around white people most of the time, but very quickly, I also had this other, the notion of how problematic it was that I was the only one.

And anytime there was turnover like a lot of jobs in the book industry, but every time there was turnover, it was oftentimes people who knew people who already worked there and often times those people were white.

So when I got the idea for this novel, it started off with the chapter one, Nella sitting at her desk smelling the hair grease or smelling something that she is sure has to be hair grease from this new black coworker who will become Hazel.

And yeah, I won't give away too much.

Well, let's look Nella.

She's an editorial assistant at this prestigious fictional Wagner Publishing, as you said, she is the only black woman.

Who is she?

Was she based on your experience?

A little bit.

I mean, a lot of this book, I should say, came from personal essays that I was writing at The New School because two years, a few more years before I started writing this book, I was really getting interested, I mean being in the city, I was especially interested in all the protests and things that were happening after Eric Garner murder in an island I was thinking about my own relationship with my blackness and how...

I was not very confident about it for most of my young life and why that was, where that came from?

All those insecurities are Nella, of not feeling black enough, of wondering why she's so good at talking the talk and also how she feels about it.

Like does this mean she's not a good black person?

Her boyfriend is a white man.

She feels conflicted about that.

So a lot of those kind of issues of identity and wondering if you're okay with how you are portraying yourself and bringing your full self to work or not bringing your full self to work.

All of those conversations are ones that I've been having with myself and other black women too who've been in similar positions.

Okay, well, as a white reader, my life experiences are as far away from Nella as could be.

But here's my takeaway and tell me if this is even in the ballpark.

To me, Nella has two jobs and one of her jobs is being this editorial assistant and the other job is being black in this white world that she lives in and as reading this I'm thinking, isn't this a huge burden for her?

That's an excellent question.

And even Nella herself feels conflicted about that because on the one hand she feels like, you know of course, why am I the only one who has to deal with, whenever there's something that happens in the news I have to come to work and I have to bear the brunt of all of it and pretend I'm okay because there are no other black people here, or oh, I have to give a sensitivity read because there's no other black person working here.

I have to speak for all the black people but at the same time there's also this feeling for her of pride.

The fact that she was able to bust through these very high walls or over these high walls and work in this very white workplace where no black people seemed to have gone before more or less, that is something that she also feels a little proud of.

And so when Hazel enters the picture, this new Harlem born very cool black coworker, Nella then wonders what her job is in relation to this other black person, because she feels in a lot of ways a little competitive but also kinship because there are those two sides of it.

Of feeling like, okay, there can only be one because that's all she's seen, but also we have to uplift each other.

What's been interesting I have to say too is that these core issues are ones that I've been really thinking about, but when I talk to other black people, other black readers and other just readers of color or other women who have worked in mostly male dominated industries, it's a similar kinda push pull and tension.

And where does that tension come from?

I really wanted to examine that in this book.

As you said, Hazel arrives.

She is the second black woman in Wagner Publishing.

She is the opposite of Nella and I think we'll let the readers figure out what happens with her.

There is a scene that comes up fairly shortly, where Nella is absolutely uncomfortable.

And probably the top author or one of the top authors at the publishing house, his name is Colin.

He comes in for a meeting and what I want you to do is talk about what this meeting was supposed to be.

And then if you could read a portion of what you wrote that is so disturbing for Nella.

And if you could do that, I believe it's on page 19.

Absolutely.

Colin Franklin, who is basically the author who keeps the lights on at Wagner Books, which is where Nella works.

He's coming in for his latest book.

I should also write, he's known for kind of writing stories ripped from the headlines.

You know, we all know what those are.

And so he's written this book about the opioid crisis and Vera, Nella's very waspy boss, has both Nella and Colin in her office.

And this meeting is supposed to be both Nella and Vera giving feedback to Colin.

The feedback is very different for different authors.

It depends who you talk to, what kind of feedback can you give?

And again, Colin keeps the lights on.

So I'll just read that section now.

And so, I'll also add that Colin has written a black character in this book called Shartricia, her name is Shartricia.

"Shartricia was less than one dimensional.

She came off flatter than the pages she appeared on.

Her white male creator had rendered her 19 and pregnant with her first child with a baby daddy who was either a man named Leather O'Nell or a man named Demon Train, Shartricia could not confirm which, because both men had fled town as soon as they'd heard.

She cursed and moaned in just about all of her scenes, isolating herself from the reader, just as much as she isolated herself from her family and non-opioid addicted friends of which she had few.

Then there was the kicker, her name Shartricia with her uneducated cracked addict murdered attempt to honor of the color of the bright green dress she'd been wearing at the club when her water broke.

Okay, so maybe Nella had found this last detail, both vexing and endearing, but everything else about Shartricia's character felt icky, especially her voice, which read as a cross between that of a freed slave and a Tyler Perry character down on her Still even with all these thoughts thrilling in her head, Nella didn't know how exactly to express any of them to the white woman who was sitting in front of her, asking what she thought.

The white woman who just happened to be her boss and Colin's editor.

"I think this book is very timely," Nella said, opting for the buzzword that everyone at Wagner likes to hear.

Timely meant coverage on "NPR" and "Good Morning America".

It meant adding something new to the conversation, which was what Colin Franklin always thought to achieve in his long list of ripped from the headlines book that included, "Murder a Sister Wife", "A Deadly School Shooting" and "A Sexy Serial Killer".

Vera noted eagerly.

Her light, brown bangs undulating above gleaming gray eyes, "Timely, you're right.

She refuses to shy away from the hardest parts of the opioid epidemic."

She jotted down one or two words on the yellow notepad that sat just beneath her elbows and then tapped her pen on her cheek that we now had seen her do in countless meeting.

And do you feel like anything in Novel, didn't particularly land the way it should have?"

Well, no spoilers here, but from my reading, Nella's big sin is that she was trying to be authentic and do her job.

And that just didn't really work out well for this meeting.

You talk about code switching.

Do you wanna give an example of that?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, code switching can be a lot of things, but essentially it's changing the way you act, the way you behave or the way you speak depending on where you are.

So a classic example would be using African American vernacular versus not when you're working in the publishing space.

And I also think the definition of code switching is different for different people.

For me, I kinda sound like this all the time.

So partly because of how I was raised and just the circle that I'm around.

But I think people also might say that I'm code switching the way I'm speaking.

And so I really wanted to play with that too and make that a character and the way that it impacts Nella and Hazel's relationship and all those little subtleties that happened between them and also when Hazel is around white people, everything I really wanted to just imbue all of it with that kind of tension and how we talk about language.

It seems that all the women in the book and black women and the white women, they really have to negotiate boundaries in this workplace.

And I think this is relatable to all women in a workplace.

I assume you would agree with that.

Totally.

I mean, especially with women, I can't remember who asked me this, but someone asked me once, you know, could this happen with black men, this book?

And I do think it's just women period, where we feel like we have to and society tells us, we have to oftentimes be nicer, candy coat things.

And that's why of course the stakes are so high not just for Nella, but also for Vera too in a lot of ways in this interaction with this white author of hers.

And that whole idea of feeling you have to make yourself small and to be passive aggressive.

Passive aggression is something that I know I'm working on still.

Yeah, I think we can underline the passive aggressive phrase.

Now I have to give you a full confession here.

There were quite a few references that I was unfamiliar with.

So what I did was I Googled every single one and I really wanna thank you.

And I wanna thank you for not explaining everything in the book.

I think it was a whole lot more powerful.

It's for me, maybe for a lot of readers that way.

And one of the things is hair classification, which total honesty I didn't know was a thing.

Because it is so important to this story, tell me why is black hair so important to identity and why was it so important to this story?

Well, first of all, I love that.

That's what I wanted.

I didn't want to...

I wasn't really conscious of it when I was writing, but looking back on it, I really didn't want to point anything.

I was really writing this for myself and for other readers like me who didn't need it explained, and I hope readers would look it up.

And I love hearing that.

So thank you again.

Again, it goes back to me and my own experiences with my hair.

Like my blackness, I've had a very fraught relationship with it.

When I was really young and all of my friends were white, I wanted to have straight hair like they did, manageable hair like they did.

And so for a while, I really wanted to relax my hair and it was this whole thing.

And then basically at the end of it, my mom said when you turn 10, you can do it.

And I was like counting down the days and obsessed with the idea of it because having natural hair at that time for me meant having my mom braid my hair and I'm very tender headed, and it would end up with me doing these like James Brown kind of like moves out of agony.

And it was just not a fun time.

So this was also one of the essays later on when I was at The New School that I was really had an interesting fun time digging into my own relationship with my hair.

And I relaxed it for about, straightened my hair, put chemicals in my hair for like 15, a little less than 15 years.

And I did the big chop after watching, after a few different things, but Stanley Nelson's "Vanguard of the Revolution" of Black Panther documentary.

That scene where Kathleen Cleaver is talking about why they wear their hair natural.

And because it's pleasing to them, that was like one of my moments where like, I just have to cut off my straight hair.

So I've been growing it natural for gosh, five years now, which is all to say that I knew this would be something that Nella would possess.

This kind of feeling for most of her younger life that she was not a sheep, but just like not questioning the choices that she made, having been also raised in Connecticut, mostly around white people.

And so I knew that would also be the thing that would draw her to Hazel, because there's a whole other thing with hair that I really think it signals, what kind of black person you are for better, for worse I think.

I know for me, whenever I see anyone with braids I automatically have an idea of their vibe, you know?

And so I knew that would be the thing that pulls them together and would also, you know, it'd just be a recurring theme throughout this novel because it's such a big part of, not all black women's experiences, but I think it's just a huge thing, a huge, huge thing.

And the last few years of the natural hair movement has been so inspiring.

And also the idea that we should get to choose.

We shouldn't feel pushed to go in any direction for our hair.

That was something else that I really wanted to think about.

Zakiya we are not going to give away any spoilers, but midway through this book, I guess there is a genre plot switch, and some people have even said, wow, this has got this Jordan Peele's quality to it.

It went to totally unexpected places for me.

It gave me so much to think about, I'm sure that that was the point.

What is the takeaway?

What did you want readers, the one thing you wanted them to take away from "The Other Black Girl".

First of all, I knew you were gonna ask that question when you said midway through the book.

You know, I love genre.

I love the "Twilight Zone", I love "Get Out".

And I love what those kinds of, I love what those kinds of works say about humanity.

I really wanted to play with genre for this book.

I love twists.

And so I really wanted to get across just in a nutshell, without a spoiler, but the horror that is in everyday life, I think for a lot of black people working in these spaces, people of color working in these spaces.

I wanted to examine what horror can actually be.

It's not necessarily a white cape or a white hood and the N word, it can be that feeling that you just don't belong somewhere.

And it can be that feeling that you don't belong somewhere from another black person.

That's really horrifying too.

I wanted to have that little twist, big twists I should say, to also just hit the reader with again, how quickly things can spiral how much can... Can you tell I'm like dancing around the twist too?

Just how much can be beneath the surface that we do not see, and to really think about how we interact with one another and really be more mindful and try to just be more open minded toward other people, other types of thinking and also when other people might feel uncomfortable, even when you don't necessarily see it or you wouldn't necessarily be affected in the same way.

Just being more mindful and open.

I love how we did dance around this and we didn't give it away.

It just makes it more exciting to want to read the book, but it lends me to timing.

And I don't know exactly when you wrote it or when you edited it, but it had to be, the country is in the middle of Black Lives Matter and there's George Floyd.

Did timing play a part?

Did it have any significance on how you crafted the story?

No, it didn't because I sold this book to my wonderful publisher Atria in February, 2020.

So literally weeks before everything shut down and weeks before Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and of course.

So that was actually a very strange kind of coincidence and unfortunately, that is how it goes, right?

When I was writing this book, it was a different time through pandemic and the conversations we were having were different, but I was still very much aware of the way that it happened in 2016, the way that it happened in 20... You know, all the wave that we have.

And so for them this to happen, for 2020 to happen, it was frankly hard to go back into this book to see how relevant it was, especially in the way I talk about Nella having to go to work and put a smile on, but I was able to channel a lot of that frustration and anger and pain that I was feeling and protesting about into this book when I did edit.

So it was hard.

It was really hard but I'm hoping that unfortunately, a year like that will reap and it has in small ways.

I've seen conversations that we weren't having the time I wrote this book.

Oh, it absolutely spurs conversation.

One thing in addition to a plot twist, you have these two timelines and there's two generations of women.

And I think maybe I'm reading between the lines, but I think you've got such a kick out of the '80s.

So tell me about, did you like writing about the '80s?

I've been told I'm an old soul, that I'm just old.

So yes, I love it.

I love TV shows in the '80s.

I also should say Toni Morrison was really in my mind when I was thinking about publishing of the past, because she was at Random House as well at one time.

And so I'd often kind of look back and think about, wow, I wonder what it was like for her, you know?

And so that was really fun to imagine like the shoulder pads and the ways that publishing was different then, but also the ways it hasn't really changed especially in terms of diversity.

I really enjoyed having those two timelines speak to one another.

Those scenes were really fun to read to.

You just had so much color in it.

It was very well done.

Another thing is that geography and race and politics kind of all mesh in here, and it wasn't very subtle the way you were comparing Boston to New York, you yourself were raised in Connecticut.

So I guess I'm taking the long way of saying this is about carrying our backgrounds with us, isn't it?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Our backgrounds and our prejudices, ones that we might not even know that we have, Nella has got her own definitely too and exactly that.

How we carry around those backgrounds and if we can never escape them was another... Not to add another question to your question, but I think about this all the time for myself too as someone who, I live in Brooklyn now but I go to Connecticut fairly often because my family's there, friends are there.

And so it's very interesting to do that and take the New York sensibilities that I've picked up, I guess you would say, and then going back to Connecticut, and I think everyone can relate to that in a different way.

Thank you.

I will tell everyone that be on the lookout for the screen version.

"The Other Black Girl" is the kind of story you will think about long after you have closed the book.

It is a smart social commentary that will keep you guessing.

Zakiya Dalila Harris I am so glad that you could spend your time with us today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

It's been so much fun.

You can find our podcast, "Go Between the Covers" wherever you get your podcasts and I hope you join me on the next "Between the Covers".