“Do Not Insert Yourself Into the Main Narrative”: Poetics of Belonging and Trauma in Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021)
Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021), which was praised for its concision and skilfulness, explores and exposes the trials of living in a society structured by forms of racism inherited from colonialism but which like to wear the mask of fairness or self-pity. The structure of the novel is characterized...
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| Udgivet i: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/pla, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprog: | Anglais |
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Postcolonial Literatures and Arts
2025
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| Online adgang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021), which was praised for its concision and skilfulness, explores and exposes the trials of living in a society structured by forms of racism inherited from colonialism but which like to wear the mask of fairness or self-pity. The structure of the novel is characterized by fragmentation, ellipses and brutal changes of focalization that belie the promise of unity conveyed by the title, which refers to a gathering at the home of the narrator’s boyfriend’s rich and old-moneyed family. When fault lines run through social assemblies, what space is there for marginalised voices to “insert [themselves]” (Brown 58) into a narrative? This paper aims at determining to what extent the novel’s writing is informed by the experience of trauma. If, as Anne Whitehead writes in Trauma Fiction, “hiatus and dislocation inhabit trauma” (2004, 5), can trauma studies help make sense of the scattered writing of Assembly? Where does the trauma lie, from where does it originate and how is it informed? How does it impact the narrator’s sense of belonging? How do the fault lines that structure as much as they divide contemporary British society ripple through the writing of this novel? |
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