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yasmineserine's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
3.0
perusinglit's review against another edition
Brown captures the stacked nature of our modern lives in the space between the endless complying, attaining and exceeding and the next demand, the next criticism. By balancing the weight of unsaid things with an overwhelming sense of something that is both too dreadful to be faced and impossible to ignore, the story takes a revealing look at the ugly machinery underneath the floorboards of everyday life. Timely and urgent.
theoreticalsiren's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
An accurate meditation on how one is coaxed into bending to the empire’s will while being made to believe that we have a choice in the matter.
linaver's review against another edition
3.0
Dnf at 64%
Brilliantly written but just really not a good timing for me.
Brilliantly written but just really not a good timing for me.
tee_tee_tee's review against another edition
fast-paced
2.0
started: 09/27/24
finished: 09/27/24
format: ebook
genre: literature fiction
2.0⭐️
over complex, word salad.
finished: 09/27/24
format: ebook
genre: literature fiction
2.0⭐️
over complex, word salad.
milliemarilyn's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
tilda_bookworm's review against another edition
4.0
Beautifully written and interesting and devastatingly sad (I took from it that this incredibly rich and successful and beautiful woman wants to die because of racism?) . I can imagine that if I was a less privileged person reading this I might want the main character to get a grip though. I do think the author was trying to get at "hey let's dismantle the system" instead of "more power and privilege for this FMC please, she's jealous of the old boys" but sometimes it landed closer to the latter for me. I appreciate that it was an attempt to show racism as a separate issue to wealth disparity. Lots of interesting issues raised actually.
hellowormemoji's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
i think this book is super interesting in terms of what it’s doing performatively. i thought the meta twist on everything at the end really solved a lot of the problems for me regarding prose and voice and syntax. that said though, i do think it’s sooooort of convenient that so much can be fixed with a simple few paragraphs at the end. like it works and props for how smart that is but it only works this once.
great length though.
great length though.
spenkevich's review against another edition
4.0
‘Why endure my own dehumanization?’
In her book, Citizen, [a:Claudia Rankine|157979|Claudia Rankine|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1198758892p2/157979.jpg] asks ‘what does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like?’ The horror stories of violence and oppression against Black people, especially women, have filled many important books and articles, yet in Assembly, the debut novella from Natasha Brown, the author looks at ideas of success in historically white spaces to show the traumas of past and present reverberating together in order to examine not only how hostile these spaces are but how collaborative they are in the destruction of humanity. This brief but powerful novella takes sharp aim at a whole slew of systemic issues that plague society and all stem back to colonialism and racism as Brown unmasks myths of meritocracy, critiques corporate inclusivity initiatives and delivers an vital voice of change and denouncement of white supremacy. Brown’s message is important and reminds us that we are all complicit in this system that has us ‘burning our futures to fuel its voracious economy.’ While the postmodernist narrative style feels unnecessarily obfuscating at times it does recreate a sense of bewilderment fitting for analyzing these social injustices and Brown really hits her stride in the more experimental final section of the book. A stunning debut that doesn’t quite pull together the style but has an urgent and crucial message we should all deeply take to heart.
Assembly follows an unnamed narrator during a weekend trip to her wealthy boyfriend’s white family garden party where she will be the only Black person present. This is interspersed with her recent promotion in the management offices of a major bank and a visit to a doctor for a tragic diagnosis. The book uses these three scenarios to extract an impressive variety of succinct critical examinations of capitalism and white supremacy while also showing how the two maintain power through their systemic partnership. It is a story about hard work and achievement yet finding that reaching the peak only gives a clearer view to society as a horrorshow of oppression. While the narrative is set in the UK and skewers the history of British imperialism, it is a universal message about the ways the powerful maintain their gates of power and try to suppress others beneath them.
‘[J]ust survive it; march on into the inevitable. As our mothers, and fathers, did. Our grandparents before them. Survive.’
Central to the story is the myth of meritocracy and how hard work and achievement is subjective in a world where generational wealth and social status press their fingers on the scales while accusing everyone else of foul play. ‘The financial industry was the only viable route upwards,’ the narrator confesses, but realizes ‘I traded in my life for a sliver of middle class comfort, for a future.’ She sees the way the financial sector thrives on creating inequalities, on furthering climate crises, and understands her work in this industry makes her complicit in all these ills. As [a:Emma Dabiri|18065850|Emma Dabiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556733836p2/18065850.jpg] writes, paraphasing [a:Bayo Akomolafe|16477197|Bayo Akomolafe|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], 'inclusion today can be understood as access to the top deck of the slave ship...access to power in a system that is ultimately a tool of destruction.' Yet without it she would be crushed under poverty, pulverized by a society that she sees has nothing but ill intent for Black women. She was born in England but hears her whole life ‘you’re not a real Brit.’ No matter what she does she will always be Othered. ‘Surviving makes me a participant in their narrative. Succeed or fail, my existence only reinforces this construct,’ she says. ‘I reject it. I reject these options. I reject this life. Yes, I understand the pain. The pain is transformational—transcendent—the undoing of construction. A return, mercifully, to dust.’
What is the cost of survival, and how does one survive in a world constantly trying to kill you. If she becomes ill, she cannot work and cannot survive. Is it best to ignore the illness and let it kill her, she wonders, as it would certainly mark the end regardless. In the US this is a constant question, especially for many who, like myself, work multiple jobs but do not have health care. Brown points to capitalism as a system that grinds people out into oblivion, valuing them only for what profits they can produce for those above them and nothing else.
‘They say they know how that woman got that job...this successful woman. This beleaguered, embattled woman.’
Much of the workplace narrative also keys in on the ways she is dismissed by her colleagues for her success. Co-workers openly complain affirmative action is unfair, or assume she is a token diversity hire, both Black and woman. ‘He says he’s no opposed to diversity. He just wants fairness, okay?’ Later when yelled to by a white lawncare worker at her boyfriend’s estate, she wonders ‘In his preferred social hierarchy, his understanding of fair, who is allowed to walk, to breathe to enjoy a saturday?’ The idea of fairness seems to assume white men are the standard, and anyone who manages to achieve to their level must be getting unfair advantages. In her book [b:Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America|53056522|Mediocre The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America|Ijeoma Oluo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569299522l/53056522._SY75_.jpg|66444954], [a:Ijeoma Oluo|14408819|Ijeoma Oluo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1635949370p2/14408819.jpg] says ‘I talk about how we somehow agreed that wealthy white men are the best group to bring the rest of us prosperity, when their wealth was stolen from our labor.’ Brown examines the ways in which sharing status is viewed with suspicion, as if it must mean someone is now stealing from the white man’s labor, so sure of some assumed natural right to be successful and valued accordingly.
‘Trancends race, they say of exceptional, dead black people. As if that relentless overcoming, when taken to the limit, as time stretches on to infinity, itself overcomes even limits, even infinity, even this place.’
Even her boss, who she shares the promotion with to become equal positions, spends most of his congratulatory statements talking about how he “gets it” and overly explains that he is “okay” sharing the promotion. Returning to [a:Ijeoma Oluo|14408819|Ijeoma Oluo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1635949370p2/14408819.jpg], she writes that ‘We are expected to support white male supremacy in order to get a promotion, to be respected by our peers, for our children to succeed in school.’ Earlier in the book we see the narrator must submit herself completely to her boss, Lou, in order to be respected by him as a worker (hinted in the opening that sexual harassment might be involved?) But Lou’s over insistence that he is okay because he is an ally is a key problem with concepts of allyship, which, as author and activist [a:Emma Dabiri|18065850|Emma Dabiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556733836p2/18065850.jpg] writes ‘you can continue to view Black people as inferior while still being committed to their “protection”,’ an issue that also arises with her boyfriend later on. Her whole office is people saying Black people should be allowed to get promoted, but can’t seem to ever find a single instance where they see it being ‘fair’, even when it is the hardest working member of their office.
Another key issue with complicity, as examined by the narrator is ‘how can I use such a language to examine the society it reinforces?’ This recalls the famous [a:Audre Lorde|18486|Audre Lorde|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1613651890p2/18486.jpg] quote ‘the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house’ and shows how deeply entrenched Black people are in a white society that, especially after generations of being told they must adapt or be part of a melting pot (which is always coded to mean become like white people in the US), there is little ‘self’ left not already smothered in a culture built on and by oppressing anyone who is an Other (race, gender, sexuality, etc). To help show the confusion and to subvert the concept of the novel, Brown employs a very postmodern style of short vignettes all tumbled together out of order as well as occasionally breaking into sections that read like Creative Nonfiction or even poetry. While it does create the sense that the narrator feels that ‘I am lost both literally and in the larger, abstract sense of this narrative,’ it sometimes feels uneven and unnecessarily obfuscating. It works best at the end when it does become more nonfictional essay, and much of the book feels very much like Rankine’s Citizen. The narrator voice does tend to occasionally come off much like a young person who mistakes poet voice for being a high tone preacher voice full of incomplete sentences as a style, and it makes me wonder if this book would be better heard than read. A few points the narration sounded like that type you’d heard in 90s films like Trainspotting (that opening monologue especially) or Fight Club, insisting on its seriousness instead of trusting the reader to understand that it is serious. It is a laudable attempt at experimentation, yet did make the short novel drag.
‘There is no back, or forward, only through it, this hostile environment.’
The final section of the novel is easily the best, and becomes a break from the narrative when the boyfriend’s family becomes the final straw in seeing just how much injustice there is in the world. It is made clear they are uncomfortable with a Black woman having access to their legacy, it is clear her job is uncomfortable with the same, it is clear the economy doesn’t view her or anyone as human, and it is clear she must find a way to say no. Brown deep dives most impressively through a historical lens of imperialism and racism, using examples of the ways Black women are Othered in daily life and addressing the whole legacy of British history.
And this is the hardest part. People complain of too many books about identity, complain that everyone makes everything too much about race, etc, et al, you’ve heard the whining I’m sure, yet these same people refuse to address the issues in order to correct them and thus are the ones who make it necessary to keep talking about these issues. And the social gaslighting that even questions peoples lived realities creates an opportunity for those opposed to equity, inclusivity, social justice, etc to pretend it’s a divided issue. Brown condemns this most excellently in the final section of this book and asks us all to join her.
‘I’ve watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days – when the them had been so clearly defined! It’s evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two’s irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They’re nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach – won’t even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just viscous, random chance. And then, compounding’
This is a really powerful little book that marks a very impressive start for a career I will certainly want to keep up with. She takes on many important issues head on and does so very succinctly. While the style of the book never quite felt like it worked, it was an impressive undertaking and points towards future possibilities that I am very excited for. Honestly, I can't stop thinking about this book. Assembly is a must read.
3.5/5
‘Generations of sacrifice; hard work and harder living. So much suffered, so much forfeited, so much–for this opportunity. For my life. And I’ve tried, tried living up to it. But after years of struggling, fighting against the current, I’m ready to slow my arms. Stop kicking. Breathe the water in. I’m exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to end this story.’
In her book, Citizen, [a:Claudia Rankine|157979|Claudia Rankine|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1198758892p2/157979.jpg] asks ‘what does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like?’ The horror stories of violence and oppression against Black people, especially women, have filled many important books and articles, yet in Assembly, the debut novella from Natasha Brown, the author looks at ideas of success in historically white spaces to show the traumas of past and present reverberating together in order to examine not only how hostile these spaces are but how collaborative they are in the destruction of humanity. This brief but powerful novella takes sharp aim at a whole slew of systemic issues that plague society and all stem back to colonialism and racism as Brown unmasks myths of meritocracy, critiques corporate inclusivity initiatives and delivers an vital voice of change and denouncement of white supremacy. Brown’s message is important and reminds us that we are all complicit in this system that has us ‘burning our futures to fuel its voracious economy.’ While the postmodernist narrative style feels unnecessarily obfuscating at times it does recreate a sense of bewilderment fitting for analyzing these social injustices and Brown really hits her stride in the more experimental final section of the book. A stunning debut that doesn’t quite pull together the style but has an urgent and crucial message we should all deeply take to heart.
Assembly follows an unnamed narrator during a weekend trip to her wealthy boyfriend’s white family garden party where she will be the only Black person present. This is interspersed with her recent promotion in the management offices of a major bank and a visit to a doctor for a tragic diagnosis. The book uses these three scenarios to extract an impressive variety of succinct critical examinations of capitalism and white supremacy while also showing how the two maintain power through their systemic partnership. It is a story about hard work and achievement yet finding that reaching the peak only gives a clearer view to society as a horrorshow of oppression. While the narrative is set in the UK and skewers the history of British imperialism, it is a universal message about the ways the powerful maintain their gates of power and try to suppress others beneath them.
‘[J]ust survive it; march on into the inevitable. As our mothers, and fathers, did. Our grandparents before them. Survive.’
Central to the story is the myth of meritocracy and how hard work and achievement is subjective in a world where generational wealth and social status press their fingers on the scales while accusing everyone else of foul play. ‘The financial industry was the only viable route upwards,’ the narrator confesses, but realizes ‘I traded in my life for a sliver of middle class comfort, for a future.’ She sees the way the financial sector thrives on creating inequalities, on furthering climate crises, and understands her work in this industry makes her complicit in all these ills. As [a:Emma Dabiri|18065850|Emma Dabiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556733836p2/18065850.jpg] writes, paraphasing [a:Bayo Akomolafe|16477197|Bayo Akomolafe|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], 'inclusion today can be understood as access to the top deck of the slave ship...access to power in a system that is ultimately a tool of destruction.' Yet without it she would be crushed under poverty, pulverized by a society that she sees has nothing but ill intent for Black women. She was born in England but hears her whole life ‘you’re not a real Brit.’ No matter what she does she will always be Othered. ‘Surviving makes me a participant in their narrative. Succeed or fail, my existence only reinforces this construct,’ she says. ‘I reject it. I reject these options. I reject this life. Yes, I understand the pain. The pain is transformational—transcendent—the undoing of construction. A return, mercifully, to dust.’
What is the cost of survival, and how does one survive in a world constantly trying to kill you. If she becomes ill, she cannot work and cannot survive. Is it best to ignore the illness and let it kill her, she wonders, as it would certainly mark the end regardless. In the US this is a constant question, especially for many who, like myself, work multiple jobs but do not have health care. Brown points to capitalism as a system that grinds people out into oblivion, valuing them only for what profits they can produce for those above them and nothing else.
‘They say they know how that woman got that job...this successful woman. This beleaguered, embattled woman.’
Much of the workplace narrative also keys in on the ways she is dismissed by her colleagues for her success. Co-workers openly complain affirmative action is unfair, or assume she is a token diversity hire, both Black and woman. ‘He says he’s no opposed to diversity. He just wants fairness, okay?’ Later when yelled to by a white lawncare worker at her boyfriend’s estate, she wonders ‘In his preferred social hierarchy, his understanding of fair, who is allowed to walk, to breathe to enjoy a saturday?’ The idea of fairness seems to assume white men are the standard, and anyone who manages to achieve to their level must be getting unfair advantages. In her book [b:Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America|53056522|Mediocre The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America|Ijeoma Oluo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1569299522l/53056522._SY75_.jpg|66444954], [a:Ijeoma Oluo|14408819|Ijeoma Oluo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1635949370p2/14408819.jpg] says ‘I talk about how we somehow agreed that wealthy white men are the best group to bring the rest of us prosperity, when their wealth was stolen from our labor.’ Brown examines the ways in which sharing status is viewed with suspicion, as if it must mean someone is now stealing from the white man’s labor, so sure of some assumed natural right to be successful and valued accordingly.
‘Trancends race, they say of exceptional, dead black people. As if that relentless overcoming, when taken to the limit, as time stretches on to infinity, itself overcomes even limits, even infinity, even this place.’
Even her boss, who she shares the promotion with to become equal positions, spends most of his congratulatory statements talking about how he “gets it” and overly explains that he is “okay” sharing the promotion. Returning to [a:Ijeoma Oluo|14408819|Ijeoma Oluo|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1635949370p2/14408819.jpg], she writes that ‘We are expected to support white male supremacy in order to get a promotion, to be respected by our peers, for our children to succeed in school.’ Earlier in the book we see the narrator must submit herself completely to her boss, Lou, in order to be respected by him as a worker (hinted in the opening that sexual harassment might be involved?) But Lou’s over insistence that he is okay because he is an ally is a key problem with concepts of allyship, which, as author and activist [a:Emma Dabiri|18065850|Emma Dabiri|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556733836p2/18065850.jpg] writes ‘you can continue to view Black people as inferior while still being committed to their “protection”,’ an issue that also arises with her boyfriend later on. Her whole office is people saying Black people should be allowed to get promoted, but can’t seem to ever find a single instance where they see it being ‘fair’, even when it is the hardest working member of their office.
Another key issue with complicity, as examined by the narrator is ‘how can I use such a language to examine the society it reinforces?’ This recalls the famous [a:Audre Lorde|18486|Audre Lorde|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1613651890p2/18486.jpg] quote ‘the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house’ and shows how deeply entrenched Black people are in a white society that, especially after generations of being told they must adapt or be part of a melting pot (which is always coded to mean become like white people in the US), there is little ‘self’ left not already smothered in a culture built on and by oppressing anyone who is an Other (race, gender, sexuality, etc). To help show the confusion and to subvert the concept of the novel, Brown employs a very postmodern style of short vignettes all tumbled together out of order as well as occasionally breaking into sections that read like Creative Nonfiction or even poetry. While it does create the sense that the narrator feels that ‘I am lost both literally and in the larger, abstract sense of this narrative,’ it sometimes feels uneven and unnecessarily obfuscating. It works best at the end when it does become more nonfictional essay, and much of the book feels very much like Rankine’s Citizen. The narrator voice does tend to occasionally come off much like a young person who mistakes poet voice for being a high tone preacher voice full of incomplete sentences as a style, and it makes me wonder if this book would be better heard than read. A few points the narration sounded like that type you’d heard in 90s films like Trainspotting (that opening monologue especially) or Fight Club, insisting on its seriousness instead of trusting the reader to understand that it is serious. It is a laudable attempt at experimentation, yet did make the short novel drag.
‘There is no back, or forward, only through it, this hostile environment.’
The final section of the novel is easily the best, and becomes a break from the narrative when the boyfriend’s family becomes the final straw in seeing just how much injustice there is in the world. It is made clear they are uncomfortable with a Black woman having access to their legacy, it is clear her job is uncomfortable with the same, it is clear the economy doesn’t view her or anyone as human, and it is clear she must find a way to say no. Brown deep dives most impressively through a historical lens of imperialism and racism, using examples of the ways Black women are Othered in daily life and addressing the whole legacy of British history.
’How can we engage, discuss, even think through a post-colonial lens, when there’s no shared base of knowledge? When even the simplest accounting of events - as preserved in the country’s own archives - wobbles suspect as tin-foil-hat conspiracies in the minds of its educated citizens.’
And this is the hardest part. People complain of too many books about identity, complain that everyone makes everything too much about race, etc, et al, you’ve heard the whining I’m sure, yet these same people refuse to address the issues in order to correct them and thus are the ones who make it necessary to keep talking about these issues. And the social gaslighting that even questions peoples lived realities creates an opportunity for those opposed to equity, inclusivity, social justice, etc to pretend it’s a divided issue. Brown condemns this most excellently in the final section of this book and asks us all to join her.
‘I’ve watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days – when the them had been so clearly defined! It’s evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two’s irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They’re nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach – won’t even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just viscous, random chance. And then, compounding’
This is a really powerful little book that marks a very impressive start for a career I will certainly want to keep up with. She takes on many important issues head on and does so very succinctly. While the style of the book never quite felt like it worked, it was an impressive undertaking and points towards future possibilities that I am very excited for. Honestly, I can't stop thinking about this book. Assembly is a must read.
3.5/5
‘Generations of sacrifice; hard work and harder living. So much suffered, so much forfeited, so much–for this opportunity. For my life. And I’ve tried, tried living up to it. But after years of struggling, fighting against the current, I’m ready to slow my arms. Stop kicking. Breathe the water in. I’m exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to end this story.’
jaclyncrupi's review against another edition
5.0
If you can do it in 100 pages, for the love of all that’s holy do it in 100 pages. One of my most anticipated reads has delivered. Brown has talent to burn.