“Creamy Crack” on Crack: A Deep Dive Into The Other Black Girl Book & Series (SPOILERS)
Don't touch our hair.
I’m a simple girl. I see a book title with “Black Girl” in it, and I pick it up! Because well, I love being a Black girl! And with reviews from The Washington Post calling The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris a “thrilling, edgier The Devil Wears Prada” and by Cosmopolitan as “Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada”? You know I had to tap in and purchase—it’s that simple. And as any individual who was entertained throughout the book and heard that there was going to be a Hulu series would do, I sat my ass down and watched the show. Simple!
Now, as a usual believer that books are better than their screen adaptations, I have to tell you all here today that I have come to a different conclusion this time around. The Other Black Girl story reads better on the screen than on the page. Let me explain—but be-and when I say this I’m so serious-ware…there are spoilers ahead for the book and show.
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During spring break of 2022, I read The Other Black Girl. The book and show follow a Black editorial assistant named Nella Rogers. Like most editorial assistants, Nella is underpaid and overworked. However, Nella is at the established publishing company —Wagner Books—where her favorite book, Burning Heart, had been written and edited by two Black best friends and former Wagner employees, Diana Gordon and Kendra Rae Philips. Although Burning Heart was a bestseller, touching the entire nation, editor Kendra Rae went missing quickly after its release—never to be seen again (or so we think). So, in present day when Nella sees that Hazel May McCall has been hired as another editorial assistant at Wagner, she is elated she will no longer be the only Black girl at Wagner. Perhaps Nella and Hazel will be the second coming of the powerful duo that Diana and Kendra Rae once were. But, Nella starts to realize… something is a little bit off about Hazel. It’s not her style as she dresses impeccably, or her demeanor, but things start taking a turn almost as soon as Hazel arrives. Within her first week at Wagner, Hazel sets Nella up for failure with her supervisor. She encourages Nella to speak out against a racist caricature of a Black woman present in a nearly finalized draft written by one of Wagner’s most lucrative authors. She then leaves Nella out to dry through telling Nella’s supervisors that her concerns were not valid, and that the character wasn’t a caricature. Right after, Nella gets a threatening note on her desk, telling her to “LEAVE WAGNER NOW.”
After Hazel arrives at Wagner, the typical “weirdness” felt by being the only Black woman in the workplace shifts to suspicion that the other Black girl at the office is weirdly out to get her. After the note, a stalker approaches Nella on the subway, telling her Hazel is not really Hazel, but a woman named Eva. On top of in-office sabotage and outsider warnings, Nella—specifically in the show—begins to have scary visions of Kendra Rae screaming for help. What is going on inside the walls of Wagner Books?
Nella, along with the readers and watchers of The Other Black Girl come to find out what’s happening at Wagner is also infecting corporate offices across the United States. The story builds to an insidious and invasive twist. Hazel is part of a larger organization with Burning Heart author Diana Gordon and Wagner Books CEO, Richard Wagner at the top. The trifling duo created a new hair product that does wonders (derogatory). I could only describe this particular hair grease as the crackiest of the “creamy crack” (the details on how this works are left largely unexplained—I’ll talk more on this later). Diana has helped to create a hair grease that essentially brainwashes Black women (and on occasion Black men) to become more palatable to the white gaze in corporate America. With the help of Richard Wagner’s influence and connections within corporate America (Ivy League Institutions, Goldman Sachs, etc.) the duo place Black women in high power positions across the nation that use their hair grease, whether that be voluntarily, or in most cases involuntarily. Nella has found herself to be Diana, Richard, and Hazel’s next target to be greased.
With the help of her best friend Malaika, and her white boyfriend (another part of the mystery of this story) Owen, Nella is able to devise a plan to avoid being greased and becoming a part of “The Other Black Girls (OBGs)” spreading across the nation. Nella pretends to use the grease by changing her hairstyle to a 40-inch jet black pin-straight buss-DOWN-lace undetectable-wig. She becomes an eye on the inside of the operation—ready and committed to taking down Diana and Richard. But, this is the ending of the Hulu series. In the book, Nella voluntarily becomes an OBG, is forced to leave Wagner books, and starts anew, with a new greased ’do and brain, washed clean of Blackness and authenticity. Essentially, Nella —now known as Delilah Henson—becomes the new Hazel May McCall in Oregon. A greased cog in the corporate machine.
Although this is a bold—albeit sad—way to end The Other Black Girl on paper, the revised ending for season 1 of The Other Black Girl series is one of the reasons it hits better than the book. While getting to the end of the novel, I remember feeling shocked that Nella didn’t fight back against becoming an OBG. It didn’t line up with the woman who we had been getting to know throughout the whole story. As we read on the page and see on the screen, Nella is a woman who speaks out against injustices that the Black and other marginalized communities face. She has even done so at the risk of losing her job. So, when presented with the truth about what was going on at Wagner by Hazel in the book, it was shocking when Hazel convinced Nella that the grease was “... Black girl magic in its purest form” (Harris, 344). To see Nella ready to take down the plot of Diana, Richard, and Hazel in the Hulu series made more sense. In addition, through getting to know Malaika, who is Nella’s best friend…let’s be real: Like Rod did for Chris in Get Out (2017), Malaika wouldn’t have let her childhood best friend go out like that. And that power of friendship and community in the face of oppressive forces—like Diana and co trying to force Nella into using the grease—is the key to preventing the spread of more OBGs across the country in both the novel and the series. Resistance is the strongest when done in community, and the novel didn’t acknowledge Nella’s community as a factor that would probably prevent the original ending. I promise you, even white boyfriend Owen would have fought against the ending of the novel!
Something that also made the series better was the expansion of storytelling through the character's hair. If you know me…you know I can (and did) talk about Black hair for hours, so this was very exciting to see. When talking with my friend Jada about the series after we finished watching it, we discussed how the choice of hairstyling between those who were greased and a part of the OBG operation, and those who were not was in line with the politics surrounding Black hair—particularly in the corporate world. As mentioned earlier, to trick Diana, Richard, and Hazel into thinking that she assimilated into their operation, Nella switches from wearing her natural hair in the workplace to wearing a pin-straight wig at work. On top of that, all but one of the other girls we meet at Hazel’s hair party in episode 7, “Caught in the Rapture,” are wearing some type of straightened style. In a CROWN Act world, unfortunately there are still policies that police Black hair in schools and in the workplace, and still prevalent notions surrounding what type of hair is considered “professional” or “respectable.” The choices in hairstyling were strategic, and I did like how the discussions on hair politics within this show were unspoken. It was definitely giving, “if you know you know, and if you don’t…find out…quickly.”
In the realm of expanded storytelling, I was also pleasantly surprised to see the series gave Hazel more depth on the screen than on the page. In the book, we only know that Hazel is stylish, suspicious, weird, and a part of the plot to get Nella to become an OBG. But in the series, she becomes a more compelling antagonist with motive. In her former life as Eva, Hazel could not get a job in her chosen career field because she is a stay-at-home caretaker for her mother. She then meets Diana Gordon at one of her speaker events, and Diana invites her into the group. Hazel is able to get a job at a top publishing house but it comes at a cost—she needs to get her Black co-worker, Shani, to use the hair grease. Shani doesn’t agree, so Diana ruins Shani’s life, getting her fired and ousted from her community. Seeing this side of Diana, Hazel leaves the OBGs, but then comes back to Diana now having experienced the career and life she’s always wanted. Diana gives Hazel a deal—successfully get your new target (Nella) to use the hair grease, and she can keep her new identity as Hazel May McCall. No more running, and no more having to be the one to get these women to use the hair grease. With more backstory on Hazel, we have a more dynamic antagonist. Continuing on the note of storytelling through hair in the series, Hazel dons faux locs—a protective style. Although she still uses the hair grease, Hazel is the only OBG with a protective hairstyle whereas the others are in styles that have some component of straight hair. This is another instance of compelling storytelling through hair, as when she first started off as an OBG she was in a straight wig, so with active awareness, and with one foot out of the organization, she wears a style that she wants to wear—not one that Diana, Richard, or society deems “professional.”
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What’s also great about The Other Black Girl being a television show is that now there is more opportunity to build the world that Nella is in. We see the formation of an OBG resistance force at the end of season 1 which is very exciting. However, one critique of the show and something I would like to see is the development of Diana as a more dynamic antagonist. What is her motive? Why go after fellow Black women who don’t want to be a part of her brainwashing operation? And I would hope that through fleshing out Diana as an antagonist, we get more information into how this hair grease even works. It essentially is respectability politics in a jar. From the show, we see that it makes the user numb to anything related to Blackness (Hazel heard “BLM” and didn’t know what it meant post-greasing), but how? We know in the novel Diana’s old friend Imani is a chemist and this was a project she came up with, but this series has introduced supernatural elements like Nella seeing flashes of a younger Kendra Rae screaming for help. So, I think they should fully lean into the supernatural-ness of it all, because I think it would be a more convincing way for how this grease works in the first place. I’m also curious to see how Nella will hold up having to act like an OBG as she’s working in the belly of the beast as the new editor for the re-release of Burning Heart. Hopefully, with the support of Malaika, Owen, and the re-emerged Kendra Rae, Nella can stop Diana and Richard, and protect and strengthen the agency and authenticity of Black women nationwide because unfortunately, not all skin folk are kinfolk.