Code-switching

Code-switching is presented as a practical adjustment to different audiences that becomes, in Wagner Books’ predominantly white workplace, a demand for Black women to make themselves easier for others to receive. Nella Rogers knows the practice as part of daily life, but Hazel’s use of the term gives it a sharper edge: an apparently neutral skill can become advice to soften a justified objection, protect a colleague from discomfort, and preserve the office’s established order.

Meaning and Context

The novel places the expression within a wider debate about representation and the performance of racial awareness. Nella follows public arguments about racism and cultural insensitivity, and Jesse Watson’s commentary has helped her think about the gap between genuine responsibility and diversity treated as a checklist. That distinction matters to her response to Colin Franklin’s novel: its portrayal of Shartricia strikes her as a collection of reductive stereotypes, not a fully realized character. She initially struggles to express that judgment to Vera Parini, her white boss, and falls back on the approving industry word timely. The episode makes visible how professional language can offer a safer substitute for direct criticism.

Nella’s unease is not simply a matter of finding the right words. Before her interview at Wagner, she worried about entering an office that might be hierarchical, homogeneous, and rigid, and chose conservative clothes rather than risk arriving in a Black Lives Matter shirt. Her earlier jobs behind bars and coffee counters had allowed her more freedom in what to wear and exposed her to people with varied occupations. These details establish a broader pattern of adjusting presentation in anticipation of how a workplace will judge her. The novel connects such everyday calculations to code-switching without reducing the practice to speech alone.

The Unequal Cost of Adaptation

At Wagner, Nella sees how race can be made both conspicuous and invisible. Some colleagues treat her as a qualified exception, as though her education has separated her from her Black identity. That perception can spare her requests to provide sensitivity reads, but it also leaves her feeling that taking the job requires giving something up. When she considers challenging Colin’s portrayal of Shartricia, she anticipates that white colleagues may hear criticism of racism as a personal accusation. An overheard conversation in which an employee mocks the prospect of hiring nonwhite applicants reinforces her sense that an objection could be turned against the person raising it.

The distance between Nella’s experience and Owen’s becomes clear when he predicts that the conflict will soon pass. Nella recognizes that, as a white cisgender man, he will not routinely face the conversations and subtle workplace frictions she does. To an outsider, Wagner’s behavior might seem harmless; to someone spending each day there, the accumulation of small encounters is stressful. In this setting, code-switching names a way to keep functioning across that divide: Nella can follow news about police brutality and still arrive at work with a smile. The skill is real, but its daily necessity reflects an unequal burden rather than a freely chosen office habit.

That burden also shapes Nella’s hesitation over Colin’s book. She believes Shartricia is flat, constructed from unflattering stereotypes, and left without a redemptive arc. When pressed for specifics, she explains that the character seems assembled from assumptions about a Black person living through the opioid crisis in Ohio. Colin’s reaction and Vera’s withdrawal of support leave Nella exposed in the discussion. Her ability to articulate the critique does not guarantee that the workplace will welcome it; the cost of speaking plainly is part of what makes later advice to code-switch consequential.

Hazel’s Reframing of the Term

After a reading, Hazel tells Nella directly that Shartricia is badly written, contrived, caricatured, and offensive. Yet Hazel’s support is complicated. Nella has watched colleagues praise Colin’s books while approaching Hazel with personal questions about her life and family, and she feels the difference in attention. She had expected a kind of solidarity between them on racial matters, or at least prior discussion before Hazel publicly praised Colin. Hazel’s treatment of the book therefore lands not only as an editorial disagreement but as a rupture in Nella’s expectation of mutual backing.

When Hazel introduces code-switching as a social phenomenon, she turns the term into a joke. Nella begins to stand, and Hazel acknowledges that she meant the remark as a teasing reference to Nella’s criticism of Colin. The humor does not resolve the tension. Nella says she wishes she had known Hazel would promote the book so enthusiastically; Hazel replies that she did not understand how badly this would affect Nella’s relationship with Vera. She promises to be gentler with Colin while still telling Vera where the portrayal can improve. Her position combines partial agreement with a preference for moderation, leaving Nella to question whether shared identity guarantees shared judgment or action.

Later, Hazel recommends that Nella apologize to Colin and calls it an exercise in code-switching. She also suggests that Nella take her anonymous warning notes directly to Richard Wagner, who might turn her experience and the dispute into a diversity discussion. In this advice, the expression moves beyond describing how people adapt between settings: it becomes a proposed tactic for defusing conflict and making Nella’s experience useful to the institution. Hazel’s suggestion asks Nella to manage the reaction to her criticism rather than simply stand by the substance of it.

Repetition, Recognition, and Power

The phrase returns in Nella’s thoughts as her position at Wagner changes. Hazel receives attention from editors seeking sensitivity reads, while Nella feels increasingly overlooked and wonders whether the anonymous notes telling her to leave were right. She understands code-switching as the familiar effort to move between awareness of racial violence and the composed manner expected at work. What unsettles her is Hazel’s apparent ability to take that adaptation further: Hazel charms colleagues, asks Vera about the books she edits, and discusses turning her grandparents’ activist history into a love story. Nella observes these performances with growing distrust, even as Hazel’s ease wins her professional notice.

The expression resurfaces when Nella, tired of smoothing over an awkward exchange with Sophie, refuses to nod or laugh along. The remembered phrase sharpens the moment: flexibility and ease have begun to feel less like options than expectations that Nella should absorb a colleague’s misstep and help restore comfort. She remains stone-faced rather than performing reassurance. Code-switching thus recurs at moments when Nella weighs adaptation against self-respect, making the term a marker of accumulated pressure as well as social fluency.

That pressure is tied to opportunity, too. After Nella takes the initiative to contact Jesse Watson and hopes for a promotion, Richard offers her a role on the project but says Hazel must also have an opportunity because she introduced them. The decision does not explicitly invoke code-switching, yet it echoes the unequal recognition surrounding the term: Nella’s initiative does not secure sole credit, while Hazel’s institutional visibility continues to grow. Across these episodes, the novel distinguishes adapting to a situation from being required to make criticism palatable. Code-switching can help Nella move through a workplace that does not readily recognize her experience; when invoked to ask for an apology or a gentler tone, it also exposes who is expected to do the accommodating.