Born a Crime

Genre: Non-Fiction

I gave this book ****

This is the true story of Trevor Noah, son to a black mother and white father (Swiss ex-patriot) raised during and post-apartheid as a poor, coloured (what South Africans call a racially-mixed person) child in South Africa. Noah was literally born a crime as in South Africa, at the time of his birth, it was illegal for men and women of different races to have sex. After Noah was born he was often hidden and separated from others for fear of his mother being jailed and him being sent to an orphanage. Noah was raised by his single mother (and grandmother) who was independent, self-reliant and not afraid to challenge the status quo. She studied to be a secretary (which was unheard of at the time) so she could provide for her and her son. Nonetheless they were poor. Really poor. Noah talks about his fear of the outdoor toilet and the flies at the bottom of the toilet pit. Noah’s life is marked by racial restrictions and his mother’s staunch belief and active practice of Christianity. He had contact with his father early on in his life until his mother met and later married Abel, an abusive man. Noah speaks a lot about poverty and what it meant to live in the ghettos of South Africa, as poor disenfranchised and uneducated people and what crime meant to him and his community. In one of the best explanations of crime I’ve ever read, he says, “…Crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do. Crime cares. Crime is grassroots….crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.” Much like his mother, Noah is a trailblazer in the field of stand-up comedy. He becomes a comedian in South Africa and later moves to the United States where he is now the host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central.

When I first picked up this book I thought I was getting into another summer read, Mindy-Kalig-like-random-amusing-musings of a funny, famous guy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was so much more than that! While there were a couple of laugh-out-loud moments (the chapter about Hitler was particularly funny), and his accents and dialects (on the audio book) are spot on, Noah gives the reader an honest and thorough education in apartheid in South Africa during his childhood. We learn what it was like to be a person of mixed races growing up in a racist country, the power of close family and staunch religious beliefs. I found Noah to be, much like other very good comedians, bright, observant and especially sensitive to the world around him. I really enjoyed this book.