Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

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The apartheid regime in South Africa was the most repressive regime in the second half of the 20^th century. The white minority used brutal violence to hold the African majority in conditions that rivaled slavery. They enacted laws the controlled all aspects of life. Not just for black Africans, but for Indians and “colored” people also. Key among these was a strict separation of races. So, imagine being a black woman who falls in love with a Swedish man. Then, imagine what it must have been like for the interracial couple to have a child. That is the story of Trevor Noah and his parents.

At its heart, this book is a tribute by Trevor to Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, his mother. While Mr. Noah tells his own stories, it is, in fact, his mother who sits at the center of this memoir. It is the story of how one determined Black woman maneuvered around a system determined to crush her spirit, and how she raised one of the best comedians of today.

I found Mr. Noah’s views of post-apartheid South Africa most interesting. He describes a society that is rife with racial and class divisions. He writes about his experiences trying to fit in as a biracial child in a country where black/white/colored have such strict definitions and boundaries. His stories of trying to navigate the cliques at his middle-class schools play at my heart-strings. He writes poignantly about not fitting in with white students, or with colored students (although he looked like them). It was his knowledge of different languages that gave hime connections to Black students, being able to speak the languages of their people. But these pale in comparison to his explorations of the youth culture in the poor black neighborhoods. From spending time living with his grandmother in Soweto when he was young, to hustling with his friends, selling pirated CDs and DJing parties, during his late teens, he offers a view into the day-to-day life that many people outside South Africa rarely see.

In the end, his stories all come back to Mr. Noah’s relationship with his mother. She struggles to make sure that her children could avoid that worst of apartheid and post-apartheid South African racism. She used every connection and bit of knowledge about the new system to make sure that they could move up from the poverty that blacks were forced to live in, towards the middle class that she aspired to.

Five-Carat Soul by James McBride

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A man searches for a long-lost train set that was made for Robert E Lee’s black child. The lives of a group of young black teenagers in a small town in western Pennsylvania. A boxer takes on the devil. These are some of the characters that you will meet when you dive in to James McBride’s wonderful collection of short stories – Five-Carat Soul.

James McBride is probably best known for his memoir, The Color of Water, which tells the story of being raised as a bi-racial child by a white mother in an African-American neighborhood. He also won the National Book Award for The Good Lord Bird, about John Brown.

 

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Five-Carat Soul is a collection of stories that mostly tell of the lives of African Americans at different points in U.S. history. My favorites are the four tales in the section titled “The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band.” These stories introduce us to Dex, Ray-Ray, Beanie, Goat, Bunnie and our narrator. They take us into the lives of African-Americans living in “The Bottom,” the poor, black section of Uniontown PA.

Mr. McBride presents the residents of The Bottom in a way that is both nostalgic and realistic. It is not an idyllic childhood. These are young people deeply affected by the inherent racism and class system of America. However, the day to day issues of their lives are both more mundane and more fascinating. In Bucky-boy, life in The Bottom is thrown into upheaval by the self-defense killing of a young black man by a Chinese store owner. In Goat, a teacher tries to help Goat earn a track scholarship while also helping his brother avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. It was the story Goat that brought me to this book. It was presented by Lavar Burton on his pod-cast “Lavar Burton Reads.” I loved listening to the tale, and went out and bought the book. Mr. McBride presents real people in very real situations. Most of the other stories are equally evocative of lives in America lived by African-Americans.

There is one part of the book that does not quite fit. The book ends with a novella titled “Mr. P. and the Wind.” It is a parable about life and freedom, told from the point of view of a lion in a zoo. This was the only section of the book where the characters are stereotypical, and the story felt forced. It is not a bad parable, but the writing is not as strong here as it is in the other stories.

Five-Carat Soul is an excellent read. The stories of African-American life told by Mr. McBride give a view that is not often seen. It does so without being too sweet or too depressing.