BORN A CRIME
By Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah’s book is just what I would have expected from a comedian of such intelligent humor and expression. He tells of being born a mixed-race child in South Africa during apartheid, when sexual relations between white and black persons were illegal. He writes of growing up different than others – not black, not white, not “colored,” but mixed.
He tells of growing up in poverty and in a country of strict racial rules during apartheid and division among tribes after apartheid was eliminated. He describes his personal childhood misadventures, teenage love (or lack of it), and run-ins with the law in a racial community.
Trevor Noah prefaces each chapter with background and historical information on apartheid, some of which I knew, but much of which I didn’t, and found fascinating.
Trevor writes just as he speaks, painting a picture that draws you in, and then wallops you with a punch line. There were two or three places in the book that were so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing, and then, in the next paragraph there would be something unexpected that would stun my laughter into a shocked silence.
Mostly, this was a book about a child growing into a young man in a country going through many growing pains of its own. The situations that Trevor was exposed to, created for himself (good and bad) and that were forced upon him, were all secondary to the person who impacted him the most -his mother, a woman of unbelievable strength and faith.
This was an excellent memoir, one of the best I’ve read.
Reviewed October 2018
House of Black and Blue 