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A review by nuts246
Assembly by Natasha Brown
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Assembly is told through the perspective of an unnamed black woman who has charted a successful career for herself in a bank. The book begins with what is clearly a place of workplace harassment, which makes the narrator feel filthy inside, but one which she ignored because that is what everybody does.
Her life is nothing if not complex. She has through hard work, reached level where she is often sent to inspire other young women, especially women of colour, yet she faces discrimination everyday in the hands of people who think she is not entitled to being where she is. She is in a relationship with a man who has generational wealth and a family name, and who cannot understand what she means when she says that while she might make more money than he does, what he has is wealth beyond her imagination. At work, she needs to constantly battle the belief that her successes are attributable to the diversity she represents, while in fact she has worked much harder than anyone else to get to where she is. If all of that is not enough, she is going through a medical emergency that forces her to arrange her life and her finances.
Though the book is a slim novella, it confronts issues of colonialism, capitalism and generations of discrimination. It exposes the lies we tell ourselves, and questions who is paying the repatriation for the sins of the past.
Natasha Brown spent over a decade in the financial services industry, and she writes with the experience of an insider- somebody who despite having worked hard to get to where she is faces micro aggressions every day on account of her race and gender. I know many women will relate to this book.
Her life is nothing if not complex. She has through hard work, reached level where she is often sent to inspire other young women, especially women of colour, yet she faces discrimination everyday in the hands of people who think she is not entitled to being where she is. She is in a relationship with a man who has generational wealth and a family name, and who cannot understand what she means when she says that while she might make more money than he does, what he has is wealth beyond her imagination. At work, she needs to constantly battle the belief that her successes are attributable to the diversity she represents, while in fact she has worked much harder than anyone else to get to where she is. If all of that is not enough, she is going through a medical emergency that forces her to arrange her life and her finances.
Though the book is a slim novella, it confronts issues of colonialism, capitalism and generations of discrimination. It exposes the lies we tell ourselves, and questions who is paying the repatriation for the sins of the past.
Natasha Brown spent over a decade in the financial services industry, and she writes with the experience of an insider- somebody who despite having worked hard to get to where she is faces micro aggressions every day on account of her race and gender. I know many women will relate to this book.