Tildes Book Club discussion - February 2025 - Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
This is the eleventh of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Born a Crime by Trever Noah. Our next book will be Hyperion by Dan Simmons at the end of March.
I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.
For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.
I found this autobiography to be witty, insightful, and very illuminating, as somebody completely unfamiliar with South Africa's history. It frequently shifts between hilarity and heartbreak, often without missing a beat.
The opening sets the stage by talking about apartheid, and just how bad the situation was. I mentioned this briefly before, but I didn't previously realize just how orchestrated apartheid was. That this system was researched and then field tested is somehow very distressing to me, because it's not just an example of people looking the other way at inequality, but actually engineering it. The only word that comes to mind is "evil". I've always held that true evil is quite rare in our world, but I can think of no other descriptor here.
Apartheid ended during Trevor's youth, and it was interesting to learn the consequences of that. That it wasn't an overnight thing, but a slow restoration of rights and freedoms. We don't learn as many details here, since this section is largely through the eyes of a child, but there's still much to pick up in subtext. Social divisions continue to exist, be it through gatherings at church, school, or even a holding cell. Language, a useful tool for bringing us together, can also be used to separate and ostracize.
Trevor spoke much of his mother, who I had much respect for by the end. She was shrewd, fearless, and indomitable. While initially feeling some animosity towards her for her physical abuse, I eventually came to understand. This isn't my world, and my values don't work here. That doesn't mean I condone her actions, but I came to understand them, and the greater context they exist in.
I was especially taken by the paragraph of Trevor's grandmother explaining why she was afraid to beat him. Trevor's lighter skin would bruise, changing colour to yellow, blue, and red. Other children's welts were less visible. It's such a simple yet illustrative example of white privilege that I would never have thought of.
From the beginning, Trevor comes off as a precocious youth. It's an autobiography, so perhaps the writing is embellished in places, or compiled from half-remembered moments or stories from family, but I still found it believable. Much I think can be credited to his mother for raising him to be independent and fearless, and for nurturing his body and mind. His parents' strong beliefs about race shaped his own understanding, and allowed him to later live in both white and black worlds, as need demanded. As he put it, to be a chameleon, but using language as a tool to blend in. I wonder how many mixed-race children were not afforded such an upbringing, and could never integrate in the same way.
The book features many anecdotes. It speaks of the joys of shitting on the floor, of learning to tuck and roll when promptly exiting a minibus, and why it's probably not a good idea to chant "Go Hitler!" inside a Jewish school. It shows the dangers of masculine pride, and the near-fatal consequences of the police not taking women seriously. It proves that a son born out of defiance can be both a crime and an act of love, binding parent and child together against the world.
Born a Crime discusses both the larger impacts of apartheid, and of the individuals affected by these greater social currents. For that reason, I think this book was a great first pick from our minority and disadvantaged perspective book list. It was also our first autobiography. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll be curious to see what others thought of this one.
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A quick note on the audiobook specifically: it was a joy to listen to.
Noah has great timing and delivery honed from his comedy and hosting experience, plus his voice just has an eminently magnetic quality to it in the first place. Like, I would listen to him narrate other books too — quite eagerly.
But getting to hear him fluidly switch accents and languages, and imbue some of the sections with an understated, buttoned-up emotion, really enriched the whole experience.
I was a little miffed that the audiobook was an Audible exclusive and almost opted to read it instead, but I’m glad I went ahead with his narration.
Hearing someone who can actually speak Xhosa and slip from language/accent to language/accent was so key for me in really grasping how much language helped people "place" you in the right caste mentally. It's code switching taken to an extreme.
Do you read memoirs or autobiographies? How does this one compare?
It wasn't until my recent (last 8 months) foray into reading that I've begun reading memoirs and autobiographical works. I still haven't read very many - I've read both of Michelle Obama's major ones and also If You Can't Take the Heat by Geraldine DeRuiter. I have a few others planned. I actually DNF'd I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy because I found it to be too triggering and it agitated me.
I think this book was the right amount of humor, historical context, and memory. One thing I found strikingly absent was any reflection on Noah's more recent past - like how he went from bootleg CDs to making it big, and how he might apply his values growing up to how he operates now. Instead, we more or less ended the book with the incident between his mom and stepdad (unless my memory just overwrote something). While that seems like a reasonable place to stop (what I hope was the end of the violence he experienced growing up), it still kind of felt like there could have been more resolution and maybe a little more recent history after the incident. But overall, I enjoyed this read and I appreciated him sharing his history and giving readers the opportunity to learn about South Africa through him.
Thanks. Here are some of my favorites.
I found Temple Grandin's memoir about her autism Thinking in Pictures to be both interesting and enlightening. (Although her work was in slaughterhouses, so ymmv).
Mel Brooks memoir, all about me was funny.
Terry Pratchett's biography A life in footnotes was also the memoir of his longtime assistant. It is a poignant, beautiful book, especially for someone who values Pratchett's work.
Quincy Jones memoir twelve notes was inspiring to me. So was Michelle Obama's the light we carry overcoming in uncertain times.
Anthony Bourdain Kitchen confidential fascinated me. I appreciated his irreverent perspective.
Born a Crime is the only book I have ever seen that made anecdotes about racism funny.
Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar’s You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey fits this bill.
Highly recommend the audiobook, as Ruffin’s narration adds a lot to the text.
I have recently gotten into reading more autobiographies. I find that I tend to enjoy ones about a specific topic within that person's life, as opposed to a comprehensive dive into their whole life, so this one was perfect for me. I really appreciated that each chapter was a different aspect of his life in South Africa told from beginning to end before moving onto the next chapter.
Do you mind sharing some of your favorite autobiographies?
I have actually only read three autobiographies (including this one) but the one that I enjoyed the most (which feels really weird to say) was "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Jennette McCurdy. I picked this one up since it was recommended by a support group for children with narcissistic parents and it helped validate a lot of the feelings that I had about my childhood. Definitely not one I recommend to just anyone, but if you have any experience with narcissists or just are interested in the subject matter, it's a really good read.
I'm not a big autobiography reader, but I did really enjoy this one. I listened to nearly the entire audiobook in a single sitting. Jennette narrates it wonderfully.
I definitely got a much stronger sense of what it feels like to deal directly with narcissism, and to see the easy manipulation that comes naturally to some people. By the end, I was under the impression that the disfunction was generational. There was lots to touch on regarding early stardom and Mormonism, as well. Great read.
Bit of a warning that the book does deal closely with eating disorders, and may be difficult for those sensitive to that issue. Even as a skinny guy, I found the descriptions of bulimia somewhat disturbing.
Not PnkNBlck. But wanted to share some of mine.
I would recommend Stephen King's memoir, his memoir On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. In it he talks about why he got into writing, his battle with drug addiction and alcoholism, and the fact that he has books that he has no memory of writing because of the drugs that he taking. This was the first book that he wrote after the car accident back in 1999. King does talk about writing in general, alongside advice and his opinion on writing. So it is really half a memoir, while the other half is King's writing manifesto.
Another memoir that I would recommend With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge. The only issues that I have with this memoir is that the wording that Sledge uses is very dated. The memoir is about Sledge's combat experiences during Peleliu and Okinawa. Some of the background that you would find about it is that he had wrote down some things about what had just happened to him in a small travel size bible, which really gave some of the scenes that he describes in vivid detail. This was also used as one of the stories in the show the Pacific that HBO made.
Another one is a weird one because it is part memoir and part history, and it is The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials by Telford Taylor. Taylor was one the American prosecutors for the Nuremberg Trials. And he talks about a lot of what happened and his thoughts on the matter. He does include some historical information as to why the Allies and the USSR went with this way and not to get victor's justice or to let the Germans conduct the trials themselves. He also describes the relations that the Soviets and their Western counterparts that went from warm to cold after the Iron Curtain had felled, which I had found interesting. The reason that I had included the "part history" thing at the beginning is that he does talks about some things that he would not have access to at the time of the trials, but he does have access to other people's journals because their families gave him access to them that were involved in the trials.
For memoirs and autobiographies audio books are my preferred medium, bonus points if authors themselves narrate them. I instantly chose to listen instead of read and I feel like I made right choice, Trevor narrated really well. How else could I know how to spell those African words :)
The only other autobiographies I remember reading were of Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin. I’m pretty sure Twain/Clemens embellished a LOT, if not made some things up. (Running across the crater of an active volcano? Really?) I enjoyed both of those and didn’t finish either one.
This one I finished. It was compelling.
Edit: I just remembered another, Haben. Haben Girma is a woman who is both Deaf and blind, who graduated from Harvard with a law degree. I really liked this book and did finish it, it gave me a lot of insight into the really simple things that can become difficult.
The book contains many funny anecdotes, often told about tragic circumstances. Did any of these particularly strike you as interesting
or important? How do you think Noah maintains his sense of humor?
I listened to the audiobook, and in the chapter on his friend “Hitler,” I started having physical responses when he talked about going to the Jewish school. Like, actual cringing and whatnot because my body needed to handle the second-hand mortification and deep-seated dread about what I knew was coming. I was driving at the time and was literally shifting in my seat I was so uncomfortable.
This chapter was the kind of story that, if told by someone else, would strain credibility and almost feel like some embellished edginess for its own sake. But Noah does a great job of going into why someone in South Africa would have the name “Hitler” in the first place; how the lack of education afforded to black people in South Africa would make them ignorant to how Jewish people would interpret their actions; and how his experience with racism textured Noah’s own interpretation of why the white Jewish teacher was angry at him.
The story was the kind of thing that, if I read a summary of it outside of the book, I would roll my eyes. At face value it feels fabricated for dramatic effect. Hearing Noah talk through it, however, it comes across as genuine confluence of different factors that culminated in an extremely unfortunate event — the ultimate miscommunication.
I felt bad for literally everyone in that moment.
In the climax of the story, the narrator negotiates with hospital staff payment for his mother's lifesaving treatment. This terrifying moment of his life is described in the form of an absurdist comedic sketch, and it's actually quite funny. The humour does not undermine the seriousness of the situation; rather, it makes the sociopolitical commentary more powerful.
It takes an excellent storyteller to keep this balance. When done successfully (as it is throughout Born a Crime), as well as being entertaining, it helps the reader to be more engaged with the serious themes.
There is horror and deep injustice in this story, and the author does not shy away from it. The same events told differently could easily have made this book an unpleasant, exhausting slog to get through. However, the story is also so funny, so heartwarming, and so inspiring, that the reader stays invested, wanting to follow the story further. It is like honey mixed with medicine, making the important lessons easier to swallow.
What were your initial reactions to this book? Did that change by the end? What are your thoughts now?
I have admittedly never watched The Daily Show with Noah as the host and have a sort of disdain for news comedy shows in general, so I’ll admit that I wasn’t too excited about this one. I was expecting it to be about his comedy career and work leading up to becoming the host. None of that is particularly interesting to me.
Turns out I was completely wrong. I ended up loving the book. It was so much richer and more compelling than I expected.
My youth was flush with watching The Daily Show with Stewart, and I went into the host switch with no idea of who Trevor Noah was. I, like many others, wrote him off as not having the same “vibe” as Jon, and quickly fell off watching.
After gobbling this book down in a single day, I’m really regretting my snap decision. At the very least, Noah has such an incredible breadth of life experiences and perspectives that I would love to hear more from him going forward.
I genuinely loved TDS with Trevor Noah as someone who watched Pre-Stewart (not as much but I was there for the whole thing) I think he was an excellent successor.
It can be worth going and finding some of his best bits out there
I had originally read this book when it came out, because I was/am a fan of Trevor Noah. My initial reaction to the book was how the hell does Noah have a sense of humor considering what he had went through. Granted, it might be due to the fact how his mother had raised him, along with his immediate family members, such as grandmother, aunts and cousins. Another reaction that I had was that Noah is a great story teller, no matter the medium, because a lot of his stand up stuff is him telling humorous and that ability really translates well into a memoir.
edit: Sorry for taking a while to reply, I got sick at the beginning of the week.
Re timing, no problem at all.
I loved this book and I was hoping more people would comment.
I enjoyed this book, especially the audiobook version read by the author, so I had intended to comment, but every time I got going with writing a comment it ended up getting too personal. So, I guess I'll just say that although I grew up in a much more privileged position than he did, I saw a ton of parallels between my childhood and his relationships with his mother, father, and stepfather. The book seemed very heartfelt, touching on a lot of tough topics, and it really spoke to me. That's all I can really say at this time.
Thanks for running this book club. I would not have thought to read this book otherwise.
What did you think about Noah's gangster/ hustle life style?
The most trenchant insight in the book is, I feel, this analogy:
I worked in low-income schools for a decade (and “low-income schools” is the polite white-person way of saying “schools in the hood”).
The first school I worked in was in the “you hear occasional gunshots” level of hood. 100% students of color; 100% qualified for free and reduced lunch. Debilitating poverty. One of my students would hang around the school after it let out, waiting for everybody else to leave, so that no one would see the cafeteria staff giving him the leftover food they would otherwise have to throw out that he would take home to his family each night.1
The second school I worked in was in a slightly less impoverished area, but it still wasn’t great. I arrived at school early enough that I would occasionally get propositioned by the sex workers in the area who were just ending their night shifts. One of my female students once talked to me about how she didn’t feel safe walking to and from school. She asked me if she would be allowed to bring a weapon with her to school, but turn it in to the office in the morning and pick it up after school before she left. This was just after the Sandy Hook shooting, so she knew that school safety was on everyone’s mind, and she didn’t want to get in trouble for bringing something into school.2
I give this background on my teaching experiences for three reasons.
Even though I didn’t grow up poor, I have more experience (ten years) directly interfacing with poverty than many people, and probably most people in a place like Tildes.
The two schools I worked in are separated by thousands of miles within the US, but the problems in both areas, caused by poverty, were nearly identical.
Hearing Noah talk about poverty in South Africa, thousands more miles away, in a completely different country, was deeply familiar in an uncomfortable way. His was a worse, more amped up version of what I witnessed, but it was still eminently recognizable and speaks to some elements of poverty being universal, regardless of culture or location.
Noah identifies hustling as a form of systemically unacknowledged work. He’d never get an MBA that way, even though he put in comparable effort for it.
It’s easy to look at that and think the implicit lesson is that Noah misspent his time. I don’t think that’s what he’s getting at though. To me, he was highlighting a fundamental injustice of poverty — that something like hustling is necessary in the first place, and that it won’t be seen as legitimate “work” by anyone.
This was one of the deep truths I learned in my time teaching in impoverished communities. To better highlight it, I want to sidestep “hustling” specifically and instead just focus on work in general. In a thousand different ways, poverty forces people to work around and through things that they will never get credit for. Furthermore, all of those thousand things sap the energy and potential for doing other things that could conceivably get them “credit” in the eyes and systems of the wider world. Poverty is perpetual opportunity cost.
I had a bright student in my second year of teaching. Partway through he stopped coming to class regularly. I’d see him every other day or two. I inquired about him to our counselor, and it turns out he’d started selling drugs.
The outside world would look at this young black kid and see a “hoodlum,” a criminal. Lock him up.
Except, he wasn’t doing it out of some malicious, asocial malignancy.
His father was long out of the picture, and his mother (who had a very difficult life herself) had fallen fully into drug addiction. She was incapable of taking care of the family.
So, he started selling drugs not because he wanted quick cash to blow on flashy junk but because he wanted to provide for his two younger siblings. Make sure they had food. Keep the lights on. Not get evicted.
This kid was only thirteen years old, by the way.3
The kind of work that kid did is unfathomable to those of us outside of poverty, but it was sadly common. Not necessarily that situation specifically, but the amount of burden put on children in general. The adultifying of kids in poverty is heartbreaking, and it happens out of necessity.
And the wider world will look at that kid and see a dropout and a drug dealer instead of a responsible, loving older brother thrust into an impossible situation.
When I was a kid, so much of my life was easy and streamlined. This freed me up to make sure that my efforts could go entirely towards learning, school, self-enrichment, etc. My life was set up so that all my efforts were essentially investments in my future, and that happened because my parents were wealthy.
In poverty, however, everybody has to spend so much time and effort on dealing with current and past issues — issues that didn’t exist for me on account of our wealth — that they don’t have the throughput for more.
Furthermore, even if they do somehow end up with surplus effort, they also don’t have access to things that will guarantee them a return on that. It’s the lack of a “fishing rod,” as Noah calls it.
There’s a longstanding misconception that poverty is a product of laziness. If I could make the wealthy world understand one thing, it’s this:
Poverty is something you are forced to work through, not out of.
So many wealthy people secretly think that I wouldn’t end up like that because I would work hard to change my situation! It’s one of those things that well-meaning white people like me don’t really say because we know it’s impolite but deep down inside we believe it to be true.
I know this because I used to think that before I started working in those schools.
I then learned the truth of poverty: the work you do likely won’t change your situation. In fact, poverty will require you to do a whole lot of work to merely sustain your already very meager situation.
The idea that you’d be different, you’d be the exception, is patronizing in two ways you might not even realize. The first is because you’re implicitly saying that millions of people are where they are because they’re not as good as you. The second is because you think you can come to adequate conclusions about something you genuinely know nothing about. The experts on poverty are the people who have spent their whole lives in poverty. Learn from their expertise, rather than disregarding it.
Whenever I hear someone talking about poverty that way now, all I see is a Pollyanna-level of naivety. I’m not saying this to be mean or judgmental. I’m saying this because I myself used to fit that bill exactly.
One last thing to consider that has helped me shift my own perspective. When you see “laziness” in people in poverty, and you will see it, know that you are seeing one of two things:
This is a miscalibration of our perceptions — one that we can change ourselves by learning more about the experiences and injustices of poverty and the human toll they exact. This is the subtext of Noah’s quote about hustling.
or
Yes, there are some lazy people in poverty. However, it is far more likely that the laziness is itself a product of poverty rather than the cause. (Plus there are plenty of lazy wealthy people too. Trust me on this. I now work in well-off mostly white suburbs and see it first-hand.)
As a student, I would get mad at my parents if they wouldn’t take me to the store to get expensive new art supplies for the poster I wanted to make for a class project. Meanwhile some of my students were trying to study by candlelight because their electricity was cut off. Noah was sleeping in cars.
They were working way harder than I ever was, but my opportunities were more than will ever be afforded to them. This is the fundamental injustice of poverty.
When in deep waters, you have to exhaust yourself swimming just to stay alive. If you’ve only ever stood on the shore, then you have no idea how much work it takes to keep yourself from drowning.
1. I don’t think it was an accident that our cafeteria workers always ended up with extra food at the end of the day, if you catch my drift.
2. I spoke to my administration on behalf of the student. They, quite understandably, balked at the idea of her checking in and out a weapon daily. I then told the student that carrying pepper spray was unlikely to get her in trouble at school even if she was caught with it, because every teacher was going to automatically understand why she would be carrying pepper spray in the first place. This was the solution she went with.
3. If you’re thinking “thirteen seems young for drug dealing,” then you’re not alone. I had the same thought at the time! Turns out that it’s, sadly, quite common. Gangs and criminals will often recruit/extort kids because they’re subject to less severe charges than older teenagers and adults. Also, this happens on the general backdrop of kids in poverty being adultified at a faster rate than wealthier peers. Consider what Noah himself was doing and had already been through at that age, for example.
This comic on different childhood experiences is now almost a decade old. It’s really stuck with me.
This was an excellent, resonant comic that makes my point better (and more succinctly) than I did. Thank you for sharing! I hope more people see this.
I like your comment much better than the comic. I feel like people tend to oversimplify this dynamic, and comics like this tend to exacerbate that. Sometimes it feels like when it comes to economic success, you can't discuss what certain people are doing right or doing wrong because people attribute 100% of success or failure to upbringing. So, I appreciate the discussion in detail.
I just want to say I appreciate your pepper spray solution because that's the sort of practicality I have to work out with my students and it's just, very real.
My experiences prior to higher ed were working on parole and I recognize the same patterns - the 18 year olds now on parole because they got involved in selling (or worse) at such a young age. How hard it is to break out of that cycle of poverty after prison even when you're highly motivated to. And few have the capacity to take care of you for free while/if you're trying to do something different
This part of his life really surprised me! I knew him as a comedian from his time as a correspondent on The Daily Show and had no idea about his life before that. It was wild to try and reconcile the Trevor Noah that we know today to the younger Trevor Noah that had to hustle just to be able to afford food and new clothes.
What did you think about Noah's mother and her history?
Noah's mom pushed a lot of boundaries, and it seemed to me like, whether she was aware of it or not, she was doing important work. She advocated for her personal freedom and hopefully inspired others to small acts of bravery of their own, even if they couldn't do the same as her. Obviously that entailed a lot of risk, and while she did suffer some consequences, given the climate of race relations at the time, I'm surprised that the consequences she faced were as minimal as they sounded. Or, maybe Noah inadvertently minimized them, often referring to them in passing, and they had a larger affect on her life overall than he might know. I'm sure scraping together fines, like he discussed, set her back more than he could know at age four or five.
Noah's mother being a survivor of domestic abuse in addition to going through apartheid made me very sympathetic toward her by the end of the story. Domestic abuse, especially at the level it sounds like she experienced, is such an insidious and horrific thing to deal with on an everyday basis. I hope her life now is healthy and fulfilling.
I thought she was awesome. Just like everyone else, she did the best she could with the resources she had; then she went out and found more resources. I don’t think I’d be as brave as her. Perhaps her childhood experiences made her less afraid of consequences, she’d already lived through some of the worst.
Were you surprised by anything you saw in the book or how you reacted
to aspects of the story?
I was surprised by the mentions of secret police. It makes sense - a society like this would have that kind of infrastructure to keep its citizens in line. Based on the way Noah talked about them and his overall lack of descriptions of them, though, I got the sense that his mom and her family did a really good job insulating him from those dangers.
Incidentally, I'm now reading The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali, which includes mention of the king's secret police. I feel like reading Born a Crime before reading this book has helped me better and more thoroughly understand just how secret police forces infiltrate a society and work against those advocating for change. Secret police as a concept are something I've been aware of, but I've never thought about or understood the mechanics of citizens working against one another in an "underground" type of fashion until these two books. Now that I have more of a frame of reference, well... I'm not happy about it, but I'll probably understand WWII better the next time I read about it...
What do you think about this book as a nonfiction coming of age story? How does Noah grow and mature? Were there turning points you noticed or key episodes that you think were important?
Race and race relations in South Africa are big themes in this book. Noah also talks about cultural differences. What are your reactions to this content? What did you learn or notice? What do you think about how he approached it? Does the content of this book have any contribution to make with regard to racial or ethnic issues in other countries and how people deal with them?
I would say I knew absolutely nothing about South Africa and apartheid before reading this book. I knew that apartheid had happened in South Africa, but I didn't know what that meant or what it looked like. When Noah introduced the concept of being similar to if slavery, segregation, and forced relocation all happened concurrently, and then described the affects, that felt like a punch to the gut (as an American who was taught about all those things in a liberal public school system). I was literally reading this with my hand over my mouth in shock at the kitchen table, reading passages of it out loud to my partner while he shook his head. While overall, I think I'm still missing a lot of context and important history about apartheid, this painted some important broad strokes and I would now at least have some information to work with if I decided to look into it on my own.
I think Noah definitely approached these topics in a way that should inspire horror in most readers - this is something we don't want to see come back. (It was eerie to read about Noah's experiences under apartheid and its unravelling with what I've learned about generational poverty, lack of services, voter suppression/disenfranchisement, etc. as they occur here in the States. Because they still occur here, and there are places where it's getting worse.) Hopefully this book will make readers more aware of how they or their neighbors might experience inequality in society, because it's not always blatant. And just because we have laws on the books about not discriminating... well, the writing is on the wall (at least in the USA) over the last couple of months for the direction that's going.
(One of the reasons it has taken me a while to reply to this thread has been mental exhaustion from the sheer volume of politics on blast lately. It's hard to separate the current hostile political climate, which includes hostility toward DEI, from this reading about race relations. It's upsetting to feel like we're careening backwards.)
I knew the bare minimum of the history of South Africa before reading this book - Apartheid, Nelson Mandela, and Afrikaans. The chapter 'Go Hitler!' really hit home on how little the US spends teaching actual world history. Our studies basically focused on world history as it related to the US, which meant that South Africa was a part of a larger chapter. I didn't realize that there are 12 national languages, with even more being spoken, and knew nothing of the way the colonizers used language as a way to build barriers between the people of South Africa.
Before I read Born a Crime, I had read James Michener's historical fiction the Covenant. I had also read (and not really understood) Cry the Beloved Country. In college I had read and loved the coming of age novel series A Story Like the Wind and A far off Place by Van der Post. (I now have very mixed feelings about this series although Van der Post was a well intentioned man of his time and the novels try to subvert racism)
So before I read Born a Crime I had a little context. But like you, for me Born a Crime contained shocking revelations about apartheid.
I’m a few years older than Trevor Noah; I would have been around ten when Mandela was released. I actually remember seeing it in the news. My childish understanding was that a good guy was in jail and they finally let him out.
His description of language as both a divider and a way to build community was incredibly insightful. It’s hard to really connect with someone if you can’t communicate well. It’s much easier to think of someone as inferior or stupid if they can’t talk to you in your own language,
I'm a bit older than you. I remember the boycott and divestment campaign against South Africa in protest against apartheid.
The day Mandela was released was memorable. It was one of my first experiences of how surprising historical events can be.