But to Nella’s surprise, she doesn’t respond by offering up fellow-Black-girl solidarity. Hazel takes Nella’s words as the warning they are. So when Hazel says, “C’mon, sis, you can be real with me,” and asks Nella to tell her about what it’s really like to work at Wagner, Nella obliges. When glamorous Hazel wafts into the office - all locs and colorful blazers, looking “very Erykah-meets-Issa” - Nella thinks her dreams have finally come true. Nella longs for someone she can make ironic eye contact with after experiencing yet another microaggression from one of her coworkers. And Wagner, like most publishers, is staffed almost entirely by white people. She’s an editorial assistant at the prestigious publisher Wagner Books, struggling to climb the ladder and become an editor herself. Nella’s been the only Black girl in her office for two years now. Early on in The Other Black Girl, a nimble-witted new horror satire by debut novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris, Nella Rogers feels ready to bond with her new office mate.
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