Assembly
by Natasha Brown
Nominations: LA Times Finalist 2021, Rathbones Folio Finalist 2022
Date Read: November 5, 2022
Assembly is a short but mighty novel about a black British woman and the discrepancies in her experiences versus her white counterparts. Waiting for a large anniversary party to begin, hosted by her white boyfriend’s wealthy parents, our unnamed protagonist is caught in a sort of limbo. She has done everything she was expected to do – college, career, boyfriend, owning property, keep your head down and carry on. So what gives?
She is at an inflection point, having recently been diagnosed with cancer which has metastasized. How does she want to handle it. Her usual method of pretending events are happening to someone else is no longer working as the pain is all too real, the implications all too dire. Her boyfriend, towards the end of the novella, spontaneously proposes but she knows in the next day or the next week, he will wish to take it back.
Her career both strives for diversity while exploiting her blackness as a symbol of their success. But she is often treated unequally, asked to do tasks people would never ask of her white or male counterparts. She feels her skin color running like a deep river through all her work interactions. She can never just “be,” for she is forever the black woman.
Assembly refers to the culmination of her choices and experience from which she has managed to assemble an identity, which all of us do. Our culture, race, social status, gender are some of the many assemblages of which we all form our identities. But many are unaware of how their identity comes to be.
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