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thequeenofsheba3's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Xenophobia, Colonisation, and Racism
_fallinglight_'s review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
A Black British woman writes what is basically her manifesto and suicide letter explaining her choice to not seek treatment for her metastatic cancer and details her history of continuous dehumanization and racism with a list of incidents of workplace sexual harassment, microaggressions, and full on racist interactions in every level of her life but most significantly in her professional sphere. She's promoted in her banking career but the suits make it seem she's just a diversity hire/promotion to look good. One day in her job after her promotion, a man married to one of her boyfriend's sisters goes on rant on how Black and Hispanic people have it easier but he's not actually against diversity, he just wants fairness. Then she's invited to her boyfriend's his parents weekend marriage anniversary dinner at his estate home, with further classist and more racist mocking by them, and throughout all that, we learn through the MC how Britain still doesn't recognize their history of abusive imperialism and colonization. We see how abortive losers use immigration as scapegoat to justify their mediocrity and seek validation for their loser selves being racist. The MC shares her grievances of being dehumanized every moment of her life and how she's literally done, so much so, that beating cancer and surviving would condemn her to keep this hellish state and how not only would she be a cancer survivor, but a Black cancer survivor, so all that would add to her being further objectified and cheaply used as "inspiration". It's a very bleak book bc you can feel the mc's exhaustion soak through you as you read and you get so angry at the fact that the white instigators of all this are oblivious throughout all of their lives. Sometimes though, it feels like the MC has a chip on her shoulder and maybe she's overanalyzing her boyfriend's parents and sister mundane behavior bc living in a white world is startling enough but no they open their mouths and they really are like that. The writing here is insightful, with gut-punch quotes. You'll have a hard time trying to not highlight the whole thing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Cancer, Deportation, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, and Classism
Minor: Racial slurs
jamesdavid's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Racism, Infidelity, Xenophobia, Sexism, Classism, Death, Terminal illness, and Colonisation
drapetomaniac's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
This book is absolutely wonderful. It's a small snippet into the narrator's life as she navigates being a black woman in corporate London. As the book progresses and she arrives at her boyfriend's estate, she enters a reflective moment and thinks about her life in relation to English nationalism and how she is contributing to that. It doesn't feel like the same points repeated in other books, however, which makes this book even more special.
My only tool of expression is the language of this place. Its bias and assumptions permeate all reason I could construct from it.
This line is definitely my favorite in the book. I don't have much to say about this quote, it simply encompasses how colonialism has affected everything in modern life, even the way language is worded.
Overall, a fantastic quick read and would 100% recommend.
Overall, a fantastic quick read and would 100% recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Racism, Racial slurs, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Cancer and Sexual harassment
hanbuckley19's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Cancer, and Racism
emzireads's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer, Xenophobia, and Racism
Minor: Sexual harassment
marissab's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexism, Cancer, Racism, Sexual harassment, Slavery, Terminal illness, Classism, Colonisation, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, and Xenophobia
Minor: Death, Medical content, Racial slurs, Trafficking, Car accident, Toxic friendship, Gaslighting, and Sexual assault
sib_reads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Death, Cancer, Suicidal thoughts, and Medical content
Minor: Pregnancy, Slavery, Colonisation, Alcohol, and Classism
ukponge's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Xenophobia
just_one_more_paige's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-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? No
5.0
This is another book, I've had a couple of these recently, that I got as an ALC from Libro.fm without really knowing anything about it or having seen any reviews of it. In fact, in the couple months that I have had it before getting around to listening to it, I still haven't seen many (if any) reviews of it, though it has been featured in a few TBR stacks. Anyways, I was really surprised to see that it was so short! And not just short but, after getting the book at the library as well (I like to have a physical copy on hand while listening, if possible, and was very glad to in this case especially, as there were so many passages that I wanted to transcribe), physically tiny, like Adichie's Dear Ijeawele or We Should All be Feminists. However, do not let the size/length fool you, this little book hits like a ton of bricks!
Assembly's unnamed narrator is a Black British woman, a millennial, a "model" citizen who followed the conflicting directions the world threw at her about achievement and being the best, but doing so in an unobtrusive way. As she travels to her boyfriend's family's country estate to prepare for a celebration his parents are hosting, she reflects on a recent job promotion, news about her health, and her life trajectory in general.
I'm just gonna start this review with a repeat statement: this tiny book hits like a ton of freaking bricks. It's one that could easily be read/listened to in a single sitting, but that you purposefully want to split into shorter readings because you need the time to process and digest. Because somehow, in these hundred pages, Brown manages to address, and scathingly call out, everything from racism to sexism to capitalism to nationalism to classism. And she does it in a way that is both intelligently (mildly subtly) integrated, yet absolutely unmistakable. In addition to that, the words themselves have a phenomenal cadence to them, a sort of urgent poetry, in which you can feel the deliberate precision of every word chosen. You can almost literally feel the intensity; it is genius writing.
As a millennial woman myself, though not Black or British (for full transparency for what I can relate to personally and what experiences are not my own), I have to say that I did identify with quite a few of the workplace/career/capitalist related commentaries. The way Brown speaks about the external expectations of reaching for an arbitrarily defined, supposedly universal “goal” to prove you’ve “succeeded” in the "proper” way - and the confines of those standard expectations - was deeply relatable. In fact, no literature I have ever read has so successfully and succinctly portrayed that most millennial of feelings. Similarly, Browns' existential questioning about purpose resonates. Taking it even further, she also speaks to race/class/sex issues surrounding “cultural capital," and the unattainable expectations on immigrants/racial minorities (and to some extent, though less applicable in her personal case, the poor). Her commentary on the never-ending requirements and owe-ing and assimilation as the only option for survival/advancement, despite incessant financial/societal payment already rendered, and the fact that nothing of the sort should be required to exist as a fully recognized human in the first place, is acerbic.
A final note, because I was undecided by the end: if you have read this, did you think her health situation (keeping it vague to avoid any potential for spoilers) was real or a metaphor? I felt like it was addressed a few times as real in the story, but also functioned as a gorgeous and horribly real metaphor, and I just couldn't decide. I mean there is nothing that says it can't be both, but really, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Well, holy wow. This little book was sharply insightful in a way that comes across as satirical, but is too real to actually be satirical. It was mind-blowing in the profundity of its brevity. A pointed and cuttingly effective indictment. Overall, I really recommend this quick, and quite affecting, reading experience.
There were so many passages and quotes that jumped at me (which should come as no surprise, if you read the rest of the review). Enjoy this selection...and then go pick this one up for yourself:
“The familiar rhythms of our stacked lives have become a kind of closeness.”
“It was survival only in the sense that a meme survives. Generational persistence, without meaning or memory.”
“I’d traded in my life for a sliver of middle-class comfort.”
“I knew these were the things to want, the right things to reach for. But I felt sick of reaching, enduring. Of the ascent.”
“Dread. Every day is an opportunity to fuck up. Every decision, every meeting, every report. There's no success, only the temporary aversion of failure. Dread. [...] I repeat the day over, interrogate it for errors or missteps or - anything. Dread, dread, dread, dread. Anything at all could be the thing that fucks everything up. I know it. Dread. [...] I don’t remember when I didn't feel this.”
“But there’s always something else: the next demand, the next criticism. This endless complying, attaining, exceeding - why?”
“It’s disorientating, prevents you from forming an identity. Living in a place you're forever told to leave, without knowing, without knowledge. Without history.”
“But what it takes to get there isn't what you need once you’ve arrive.”
“Their culture becomes parody on my body.”
“You cannot cut through their perception of reality.”
“Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don't make anyone uncomfortable. Don't inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air.”
“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 vicious, random chance. And then, compounding.”
“How do we examine the legacy of colonization when the basic facts of its construction are disputed in the minds of its beneficiaries? [...] ...a deliberate exclusion and obfuscation within the country's national curriculum. Through this, more than records were destroyed. The erasure itself was erased.”
“Surviving makes me a participant in their narrative.” (Holy fucking shit what a line, what an insight, what a realization.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Sexism, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Gaslighting, Colonisation, and Cancer
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