I've just finished reading Trevor Noah's autobiography Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. It's an excellent book; I highly recommend it. I've passed it on to Mulan to read, too, though she hasn't started it yet.
For those who don't know, Noah is the host of the US TV show The Daily Show. But what makes his life story truly fascinating is that he was born during apartheid in South Africa to a black mother and white father. As Noah says, he was literally born a crime -- at the time what his parents did was illegal, and as a young boy he was the physical evidence of their crime.
Noah has a great way with words. He tells awesome, entertaining stories, and his book is easy and pleasurable to read.
But his stories are also an eye opening education into the South African society that Noah was raised in. Alongside laughing at Noah's antics, we are also, in equal measures, horrified at the evil system that was developed and the many broken people this system created.
What hits hard for me is that all of this was happening to Noah around the time I was growing up. And yet I was mostly completely unaware of what was going on. I was indeed raised in a naive, ignorant, complacent bubble.
When Nelson Mandela died in 2013, I wrote a few words on this.
No comments:
Post a Comment