Assembly by Natasha Brown
In this stunner of a short debut novel - sparsely written in vignettes - the unnamed protagonist, a young black woman, finds success in all that she strives for. Making her way to the top of her London finance firm while on her way to a garden party at the home of her (white) boyfriend with his politically well connected parents and their old-money privilege, she reflects on a life recently and starkly contrasted by a cancer diagnosis.
Assembly is not only a poignant, thought-provoking account of what it means to be a black woman in Britain, it also draws an all important line to the strong legacy and heavy weight of British colonialism. No matter how well our protagonist does, how hard she works, how successful she is, it is never good enough.
'This is how I've been prepared. This is how we prepare ourselves, teach our children to approach this place of obstacle after obstacle. Work twice as hard. Be twice as good. And always, assimilate.'
As described in this slightly genre defying novel, it doesn’t matter how much success she achieves, be it in her personal life or at work, nothing escapes the assumptions people make on the basis of her skin colour.
'It's disorienting, prevents you from forming an identity. Living in a place you're forever told to leave, without knowing, without knowledge. Without history.'
Assembly is smart, painful, truthful and important. While it isn’t always possible to walk a mile in another person's shoes, here is an opportunity to understand and to hopefully become smarter about our own assumptions.
Happy Reading!