Because Trevor Noah's memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood has been well-reviewed since it was published in 2016 (it has over 66,000 reviews and comments on Goodreads) it doesn't need another. Rather, these are a few personal reactions and thoughts about the book. Consider yourself warned.
Noah's birth was a crime because at the time (1984), sex between a white and a black was illegal, let alone marriage. His father was a Swiss expat; his mother was black, a Xhosa woman. Their time together was always fraught, although much more for Patricia Noah than his father.
Noah is, in South Africa, "colored"—neither black nor white, which meant he could move between groups. It also meant he was a lonely kid because the blacks thought he was too white; the white kids thought he was too black. Because even during apartheid there were other coloreds in the country, the laws outlawing fraternization we sometimes (often?) ignored.
Patricia did not spare the rod. Noah was a rambunctious child and his mother often felt—with good reason—she had to give him a hiding (spanking). No matter how she punished him however, Noah always felt loved. Interestingly, he felt that when the black man she married gave him a hiding, he didn't love him; it was out of pure viscousness.
Because I know virtually nothing about South Africa's history or society, I welcomed Noah's short notes to provide context and background for his stories. The Dutch settled on the coast, were pushed north by the British and became Afrikaans. To control the majority black population, the whites set up "homelands" for the ethnic groups and encouraged rivalry. Today South Africa has a dozen official languages; Noah speaks six or more and the book contains stories of how this fluency helped him more than once.
Born a Crime is a superior memoir because Trevor Noah grew up in an extraordinary society at an extraordinary time and he writes so engagingly about it. It's a book that makes you (me) want to sit down with him and request for more.
I also found his memoir deeply personal and very engaging. His childhood is so far from anything I could ever have imagined. Apartheid is not a distant memory for some of us; I distinctly remember their fight for the freedom to exist in their own country. But how can someone live in between 2 worlds, neither accepting of him? Trevor Noah's perspective brings the reader into that world. As host of the Daily Show, he was able to comment on America's quirks and also wonder at the culture. His standup comedy now includes many observations of the world and our country. One of my favorites is his story of how, as an adult, he learned German to surprise his Swiss father when they got together. He greeted his father in German and began to order lunch in German. His father gently touched his arm and whispered "No more German" because he'd mangled the language so badly. They both got a big laugh and once again, the humanity shines through.
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