The Other Black Girl by  Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Other Black Girl

Zakiya Dalila Harris

Genre-wise, this is difficult to pin down. It moves from witty office politics to chilling social commentary on racial microaggressions, spinning into a creepy magical realism/science fiction thriller! I actually had to read it twice to really grasp what was going on, but I was gripped both times!

Extract

It brought her back to her high school days, when Black kids would see her holding hands with her white boyfriend in the hallway or eating lunch with her white friends in the cafe and whisper to one another, not very discreetly, there go the Oreo. It wasn’t her fault that her honors class had been over-whelmingly filled with white and Asian students - that they were all she’d really known - and so she’d just pretend she hadn’t heard. Pretend she didn’t worry at least once every day that she wasn’t 'Black enough'.

Parallels
  • Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
  • Get Out - the film