A review by helen
Assembly by Natasha Brown

4.0

An Oxbridge-educated Black British woman, who has worked her way up to be a successful and wealthy employee of a City bank, examines her "complicity" in the colonialist structures of British society.

The prose is sharp and cuts with poetic precision. I didn't get on as well with the structure, which was a bit too experimental and non-linear for me. But overall a good read.

Favourite quote:

"I pay my taxes, each year. Any money that was spent on me: education, healthcare, what - roads? I've paid it all back. And then some. Everything now is profit. I am what we've always been to the empire: pure, fucking profit. A natural resource to exploit and exploit, denigrate, and exploit. I don't owe that boy. Or that man. Or those protestors, or the empire, the motherland, anything at all. I don't owe it my next forty years. I don't owe it my next fucking minute. What else is left to take? This is it, end of the line.

I am done."