Three Reasons to Read Trevor Noah’s “Born A Crime.”

Trevor Noah’s “Born A Crime” is a memoir that includes the account of childhood under the careful gaze of his mother. The book contains Noah's experience being mixed race in South Africa, a situation considered a crime under the apartheid. As Noah struggles with the complexities of identity, he also celebrates his culture along with the freedom to be his own person. 4Cs introduced Noah’s memoir for a “One Day Read Aloud” book event on Feb. 14th. Although the read-aloud event has passed, the book is still worth the read. The top three 3 reasons to read Noah’s 2017 novel are for its humor, insight, and heart.

Trevor Noah’s “Born A Crime." (Tribekah Jordan)

Humor 

Trevor Noah is a stand-up comedian whose effortlessly engaging style comes through in his writing. On the first page, his dark humor is introduced. He compares the time he was 9-years-old when his mother threw him out of a moving car to a scene in a film. In a Hollywood movie, he might pop up and dust himself off after tumbling like an action hero. “Getting thrown out of a moving car hurts way worse than that,” he writes. All of Noah’s trauma that could be met with pain is told through humor, thanks to his mom. Once he and his mom jumped from the car to their safety they began to laugh. “She broke out in a huge smile and started laughing. I started laughing too, and we stood there, this little boy and his mom, our arms and legs covered in blood and dirt, laughing together through the pain. ...”

 

Insight

Noah’s memoir includes his confrontations with the apartheid in South Africa as a child. Noah provides provided context for the readers as to what the apartheid is and how it’s orchestrated.

“Apartheid was perfect racism. It took centuries to develop, starting all the way back in 1652. ...To impose white rule, Dutch colonists went to war with the natives, developing a set of laws to subjugate and enslave them. The British abolished slavery in name but kept it in practice (1800s). … As the British empire fell, to maintain power in the face of the Country’s rising black majority, the government set up a formal commission to  go out and study racism all over the world. ...They came back to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man.”

Noah continues to share the extent of racism South Africa endured under Apartheid, “In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was Apartheid.”

 

Heart 

The heart of this story belongs to Noah's mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. She was a woman who knew what she wanted from life and held no place for fear. Patricia chose to have a child with a white man under apartheid, knowing that one of the worst crimes a person could commit in South Africa at the time was having sexual relations with a person of a different race. Noah shares his feelings behind this, “Where most children are proof of their parents love,” Noah writes, “I was proof of their criminality.” This act affected Noah's childhood as well as the way his parents could exist perform. The only time Noah could be with his father was indoors. His mother would risk holding her baby and as Noah grew, she would walk with him in public, but if the police showed up, she’d drop his hand and pretend he wasn’t hers. 

Noah grew up confused as to why they never moved to Switzerland from Africa along with his father. Noah’s mother Patricia replied, “This is my country. Why should Should I leave?” Patricia was strong willed, enduring many obstacles from both her childhood and later with motherhood, and, according to Noah, she held the philosophy: ”Learn from your past and be better because of your past, but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold onto it. Don’t be bitter.” She raised Noah to believe the world was his oyster, that he should speak up for himself, that his ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered. 

 

What better way to speak up on his ideas, than to write a memoir for the world to see.