A review by yavin_iv
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Did not finish book.
Got about 2/3 through. Mostly a fine introduction to life in South Africa during/right after apartheid but there's a story around that 2/3 mark where like--(cw antisemitism)
after Trevor explains that Black people in South Africa mostly understood Hitler as one of history's many strongmen, which led to people picking "Hitler" as their sons' European name, he tells a story about how he DJ'd at a Jewish school with his dance hype friend of that name he and the 90s/00s dance chant of "go [name]! go [name]!" for said friend, and a MASSIVE misunderstanding ensued. Trevor and his friend thought the Jewish people were upset about sexualized dances and were being racist, and like doubled down on the chant before cursing them out and leaving. The white Jewish people did go into "you people" territory in confronting them, but it was a bad situation all around between two marginalized groups of people who didn't understand each other or how they were each inflicting hurt. Most of the stories Trevor tells in this book are done so in a humorous light, but this one is just--it's more sad than anything!
I found the attempted humorous framing of this story to be super distasteful. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings