Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

☺☺☺☺_

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.