An Office Rivalry Turns Strange — And Maybe Dangerous — In ‘The Other Black Girl’

By BETHANNE PATRICK via https://www.npr.org/

So many of us know the feeling of finding that one other person — in the school lunchroom, in a college dorm, at our office — who understands us, who knows what we’re going through, who wants to be our friend and who may make our daily path just a bit easier, with shared looks and laughs and messages.

Nella Rogers wants that one other person in her work life, with an added layer: Nella is Black in the all-white Wagner Books office in (where else?) Manhattan. She longs for another Black woman as colleague, someone with whom she can share the pressures Black people face overall in corporate America, and particularly in industries like publishing that have long functioned as de facto country clubs, rife with class privilege, nepotism and deeply ingrained bigotry.

One day, Nella’s nose twitches: She’s detected the…

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