Zakiya Dalila Harris' life inspired 'The Other Black Girl.' Why she had to cut the cord
NEW YORK — Four years ago, Zakiya Dalila Harris quit her job to as an editor at Knopf Doubleday to do something that, at the time, even she thought was crazy: write a novel.
And not just any novel, but one that skewered the supposedly englightened book business through the eyes of a young Black woman stuck in a low-level assistant job at a prestigious, overwhelmingly white publishing house.
To make it possible, Harris and the boyfriend she'd been dating for less than a year began living together in a studio apartment in Midwood, a far-flung Brooklyn neighborhood. Over the course of a frantic summer, in between shifts at a cupcake shop and a creative writing workshop for kids, she finished a draft.
"It's insane. I don't know who that person was," recalled Harris, over the din of sweet sweepers on a sweltering early September morning in Park Slope. "I was very desperate, and so tired of publishing."
The desperation didn't last long: Her debut novel, "The Other Black Girl," a creepily satirical, zeitgeist-capturing thriller aptlya "perceptive exploration of racism in publishing, wrapped up in a whip-smart story of young women at war in the workplace.")
