I actually preordered this book by Zakiya Dalila Harris, but decided to save it for my spooky October read, then forgot about it until some friends of mine mentioned they were going to read it, which brought it back to the top of my TBR list.
I had really high expectations for this book, and at first it didn’t quite meet those expectations. Harris’s way of providing exposition was to break in the middle of a scene, jump back to another scene that had taken place at some point in the past, then jump back into the “present day” scene and continue with that scene, which left me feeling disoriented and scrambling to regain my bearings.
I also think her writing could have been pared down a fair amount. She had a tendency to use a lot of superfluous words, where fewer words would have done a better job of getting her point across. That said, it’s a pretty nit-picky criticism, especially for a debut novel. I’ll definitely be interested to see how her writing progresses in future books.
The protagonist of the book is Nella, a black woman in her 20s working as an editorial assistant at a major publishing house in NYC. She’s always wanted to work in publishing, but she’s frustrated with how overwhelmingly white her workplace is, so she’s thrilled when she realizes one of the editors has finally hired another black girl, named Hazel, as her assistant.
At first, Hazel appears to be perfect. She easily wins over all her white colleagues, plus she runs a nonprofit to help young black poets in her free time. She also grew up in Harlem, leading Nella (who grew up in Connecticut) feeling like she’s “not black enough”.
Trouble starts for Nella when one of the publisher’s most successful authors, a white guy named Colin, turns in a book about the opioid epidemic that includes one black character who is a pretty cringe-worthy stereotype.
Nella goes back and forth on whether she should mention to her boss how problematic the character is, but she doesn’t get the chance until they’re both meeting with the author. So now Nella is in a room with two white people who have control over her job, and although they make a big show of asking for her input on the book, they get very offended when she does so, call her racist, and then demand that she apologize in writing.
Things go downhill from there for Nella, especially after Hazel reads the book and defends it, completely throwing Nella under the bus.
Nella soon figures out there’s more to Hazel than meets the eye, so she starts investigating. Turns out there’s a hair care product for black people that turns them into the black version of Stepford wives. It’s supposed to make them able to tolerate racism better so they don’t have to be so miserable all the time, but how can you fix what you refuse to see?
The formula also has the unfortunate side effect of making black people more competitive with each other, which is something the person creating the product is working to fix.
We know this because the book is not told entirely from Nella’s perspective. This shadiness goes back decades, and we get to see some of how it started. We also get peeks into a secret organization that’s, not only aware of what this hair care product is doing to black people, but is actively trying to put a stop to it.
Like I said, I had some minor quibbles with the writing to begin with, but the plot and characters won me over so completely that I found it hard to put down. I highly recommend this one.