INTERSECTIONALITY IN NATASHA BROWN’S „ASSEMBLY“

Abstract

Natasha Brown’s debut novel Assembly (2021) positions its black, female, British narrator at the intersection of colonial racial legacy, immigrant experience, class divides and exploitative (neo)liberal practices, insidious misogyny, and a tectonic shift introduced by a cancer diagnosis. This paper’s research methodology encompasses interpretations of the dynamics of power, modes of oppression, and structures of privilege within theories of intersectionality. Specifically, the “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” as defined by bell hooks provides a useful framework for understanding Brown’s (millennial) vignettes which recall fragments of memory and introspection. The novel’s interpretation reveals playgrounds of dehumanizing, indoctrinating gazes, of diversity rooted in tokenism, and of supposed equality based on the neoliberal view of the individual as autonomous and free, which hides a sterile, hierarchical paradigm that commodifies and suppresses dissenting voices. The purposefully unresolved polysemy of an “assembly”, which stands for a place of dissenting identifications, of performative ritual, and of the novelistic form itself is left to loom large over Brown’s narrative.