With heightened awareness of cultural sensitivity comes great responsibility. If we’re not careful, ‘diversity’ might become an item people start checking off a list and nothing more—a shallow, shadowy thing with but one dimension.
-- Jesse Watson (Part I )

Importance: This quote from Jesse offers a glimpse at one of the novel's main theses, smuggled into a Tweet from a fictional Black activist. Since The Other Black Girl takes aim at performative diversity as a root cause of racial unrest in the workplace, this quote is an important linchpin in the novel's political theory.

You gotta be twice as good, remember?
-- Nella (Part I)

Importance: This concept—which is repeated in various iterations throughout the novel—is one that undergirds the constant struggle that Nella experiences in the white-dominated industry that she calls her own. Nella and Malaika frequently touch on the idea that Black people have to be "twice as good" or "work twice as hard" in...