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New York Life

 I knew I needed "The Other Black Girl" because my first job was in publishing; I worked a few floors below Zakiya Dalilah Harris's eventual home (ZDH worked at Knopf/Doubleday).

What is the setup here? A young woman, Nella, finds herself at a publishing house. She is the only Black person on her floor. Life in New York presents challenges for a young person; you need a scarf that is appropriately thin for the overbearing subway air-conditioning, but also appropriately thick for the stunning heat on any given subway platform.

You don't get an office if you're an editorial assistant; you get a cube, so you're intensely aware of the smells and phone-sounds of every person within a three-cube radius. One obnoxious "cube-floater" will work for the ninety-year-old editor who never comes to the office anymore; because the cube-floater has no actual tasks, she will just wander the floor and bother you when you're trying to complete a call.

My favorite thing about Nella, so far, is that she has found a way to end workplace conversations. Regardless of the subject at hand, Nella will smile and say, "Great, I'll report back!" And that "report back" seems to placate her visitor, whoever that visitor might be. (I actually tried this with a NICU nurse yesterday, and it worked well.)

Harris doesn't need my endorsement (her book is already a bestseller), but I'm giving it anyway. I'm absorbed.
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