A Black Feminist Reading Of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl (2021)

Résumé: The following research paper has examined the characters’ experiences as well as the plot of Harris’s novel, The other black girl (2022). The dissertation has explored the extent to which Black women experience oppression in their working environment. In order to reach this objective, I have borrowed some concepts from Collins’s book entitled Black feminist thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the politics of empowerment (2000). These concepts consist of mule uh de world in relation to intersectionality as well as the matrix of domination and its four domains of power. Collins’s theory has provided the necessary elements that have led us to conclude, first, that Black women are treated as mules. Unfair treatment from their fellow white superiors made them work harder than their white colleagues without getting recognised or awarded for doing so. In addition, I have come to understand that the oppression of Black women is the result of intersecting oppressions due not only to their race but also to their gender and class. Second, I have also deduced that oppression is being controlled, regulated, and legitimized as it works through a matrix of domination. This research paper consists of two major chapters, the first chapter entitled ‘Intersectional oppression and mule uh de world in The other black girl’ has sought to exhibit the intersectional oppression and the way Black women are treated like mules through the experiences of the main character, Nella who was oppressed by the white-dominated publishing industry she works for. However, the second chapter entitled ‘The matrix of domination in The other black girl’ has shed light on the way oppression takes different shapes according to the matrix of domination by studying its four domains of power. Through my analysis of the characters’ behaviours and relationships, I have understood the extent to which power and domination of Black women are controlled, regulated, and legitimized.

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