Zakiya Dalila Harris and Oliver Jeffers talk about different kinds of hauntings

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's almost Halloween, which means that we're in peak spooky season. So for today's episode, we bring you two books with two very different kinds of frights: a haunted house and...office politics. That's right: In The Other Black Girl, writer Zakiya Dalila Harris captures the all-too-real horror of being the only Black woman in her office. When another Black woman is hired, the tension gets dialed up even higher. And in There's A Ghost In This House, the author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers uses old photographs to create creepy illustrations that will give both children and adults goosebumps.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's the height of spooky season.
0:08.0	In a minute, we'll hear about a kid's book that takes on some classic fears, a creepy house and lingering ghosts.
0:14.8	But first, a fear that's a little bit more real, but just as isolating and panic-inducing as any haunted house.
0:22.3	The other black girl is set in an office full of, well-meaning, nice enough, white people,
0:28.2	and Nella, the lone black woman at the office.
0:30.9	As the title of the book implies, another black woman shows up, and that sets the stage for a
0:36.2	thriller that plays off of insecurities,
0:39.2	identity, race, and the absolute horror of office politics.
0:44.5	Writer, Zakiya Delilah Harris talked with NPR Scott Simon about.
0:48.1	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:52.9	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.
0:59.6	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:07.1	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:13.1	Nella Rogers is happy at first to see that another black woman has been hired as an editorial assistant at Wagner Books.
1:20.6	She's often tired of being just about the only black person in the room, actually in pretty much all the rooms of the publisher.
1:28.8	One morning,
1:34.2	Nella sees through a small crack in a cubicle, which she calls the flash of a brown hand.
1:40.7	Let's ask Zika Delilah Harris, author of the new novel, The Other Black Girl, to read what she first sees of Hazel May McCall. The girl had a wide symmetrical face and two almond-colored eyes perfectly spaced between a Lena Horn nose and a generous forehead.
1:53.0	Her skin was a shade or too darker than Nella's chestnut complexion, falling somewhere between Hickory and number.
1:59.9	And her locks, everyone as thick as a bubble tea
2:03.1	straw and longer than her arms, started out as a deep brown, then turned honey blonde as it
2:08.9	continued past her ears. And then there was the girl's pantsuit, a smart-looking ensemble
	...

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