On assimilation and milestones
Reviewing Natasha Brown's gripping novel "Assembly" and some book recs
I launched The Brown Self, previously The Brown Bookshelf, one year ago! I’m happy that I’ve been pretty consistent about it; I sent out a newsletter nearly every month of 2021 (except for May) and my readership has steadily grown throughout the year. I’m grateful for the time you take to read, skim over, and engage with my words. Here’s to another year of consistent writing!
The first day into 2022, I found myself absorbed in Natasha’s Brown debut novel “Assembly”. I read it in one breathless sitting during a three-hour train ride this week, oblivious to the blurry dreary French countryside rushing past me.
In “Assembly”, Brown writes about how the violence of assimilating into British neocolonial culture and the micro and macro aggressions of navigating the corporate workplace as a Black woman. The main narrator is a Black British woman, and, as readers, we are privy to her thoughts as she prepares herself for a garden party held at her white boyfriend’s family estate in the British countryside. On paper, our narrator has it all - she’s got the finance “City job” and, according to her wealthy, trust-fund boyfriend, makes “a metric shit ton of money.” She cracked open the glass ceilings that are fortified against Black women and has climbed up the proverbial social ladder. However, the view from the top is far from reassuring. The narrator realises that, for all her money (which she distinguishes from her boyfriend’s “wealth”), she still needs to “study this cultural capital” by observing and mimicking the white people in her entourage. For all her education and status, she realises that this “is not acceptance, not yet.”
“I am what we’ve always been to the empire; pure, fucking profit. A natural resource to exploit and exploit, denigrate and exploit.”
It is a short but heavy read, and it will hit home for many of us who’ve had to transition into a new country, culture and social class. The process feels eerily similar; parents who work hard and make sacrifices in a hostile country, instilling in their children the need to work twice as hard as their peers. The children, feeling the crushing weight of expectations, work thrice as hard, pulling all-nighters and devising strict revision regimens to ace their exams because that’s the only way towards “a sliver of middle-class comfort”. The children graduate, some make it through to prestigious schools, and are surrounded by classmates who have never had to “deal in grubby compromise” all their lives. These children work their way through the system, transforming their “style, mannerisms” to blend in. I wrote about my own personal experience (without using the lens of assimilation because of the lack of hindsight) back in 2014 when I started to feel the brunt of the Parisian life.
“Assimilate, assimilate… Dissolve yourself into the melting pot. And then flow out, pour into the mould. Bend your bones until they splinter and crack and you fit. Force yourself into their form.”
During this whole process, we inevitably lose our sense of self. The most glaring part of Brown’s story is the emptiness. The resounding emptiness that the narrator feels about her achievements and her social ascension. The realisation that no matter the heights she touches, she will never be enough. She dissects her relationship with her wealthy white boyfriend, well aware that “his presence vouches for mine, assures them that I’m the right sort of diversity.” It is hard to acknowledge it, but many WOC (including me) benefit from being in a heterosexual relationship with a white man - we access different social spaces that were previously unknown or hostile to us. And these white men benefit from having us at their side - we become “think evidence of their open-mindedness, their knack of cultural bridge-building”.
At the beginning, we feel humbled and lucky to be part of a new shiny world that had been inaccessible to us our whole lives. Then, somehow, the perfect postcard begins to unravel with the insidious commentary, the remarks, the realisation that their wealth and status is built upon generations of labour theft, white supremacy and institutional gatekeeping. Brown writes:
“And he is an individual and I am an individual and neither of us were there, were responsible for the actions of our historical selves? Yes. Yet, he lives off capital returns, while I work to pay off the interest? Yes.”
The injustice of it all is excruciating. Having to juggle with it all to make sense of our place in this new world, versus our old ones, and having to fit our pieces into its interstices is exhausting. But reading “Assembly” helped me tie some loose ends, and has strengthened my resolve to keep questioning myself and my place, even if the questions are uncomfortable and the answers are painful. The book heavily and scarily echoes discussions I have had with Black and Brown friends who have gone up the social ladder, made a name for themselves, settled in relationships with white men, and who, ultimately, begin to experience the flip side of the coin as life rushes by. It is an ongoing conversation and negotiation with ourselves, in an attempt to not lose our sense of who we are amidst the cacophony.
Other recommended reads:
Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi: this book will get its dedicated newsletter because it was mind-blowingly beautiful. I will most definitely give it a re-read this year.
Theory as Liberatory Practice by bell hooks: the wonderful bell hooks passed away in December, and reading her words again felt like self-care. Here’s to working my way through her legacy in 2022.
Wrote a piece on the systemic racial and social inequalities in the Mauritian public school system for Island Pieces - check it out! Available in English, Creole and French.
Have you read “Assembly”? Have you also experienced the effects of hyper assimilation into the dominant culture? As per usual, your thoughts and comments are welcome in this space or privately by replying to this email.
Good health and safe havens to you all,
S.