A review by shirley098
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.75

An absolutely wild ride, giving snippets, both lighthearted, fun, but also heavy, dark, of a childhood lived in a transitory South Africa. Noah's narration was warm and vivid, creating his full cast of friends and family on his own (Grandma Coco being a highlight). His personal insights into race, class, systemic oppression, and the cycle of poverty, were sharp and interesting to consider.

End note: His mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is an absolute force to be reckoned with; I found her completely admirable in how she always refused to complain and play a victim, despite all the hardships she lived through.

Quotes that stuck with me:

People always lecture the poor: “Take responsibility for yourself! Make something of yourself!” But with what raw materials are the poor to make something of themselves? 

People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.

We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to.

Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.

People thought my mom was crazy. Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, these things were izinto zabelungu -- the things of white people. So many people had internalized the logic of apartheid and made it their own. Why teach a black child white things? Neighbors and relatives used to pester my mom: 'Why do this? Why show him the world when he's never going to leave the ghetto?'

'Because,' she would say, 'even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I've done enough.

So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows you from generation to generation. My mother calls it “the black tax.” Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bring everyone behind you back up to zero.