Born a crime: stories from a South African childhood DB86608 Noah, Trevor.
Reading time: 8 hours, 46 minutes.
Read by Trevor Noah.
Stage and Screen
Biography
The host of TV's The Daily Show shares his coming-of-age story as the child
of a white father and black mother in South Africa. Their very union was
considered a crime, and when the author was born during apartheid, his
biracial status made him an outcast. Violence, strong language, and
descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. 2016.
I first must admit that I don't have a TV and I've never watched The Daily
Show, although I've certainly heard bits and pieces of it on line over the
years. But this book was on some list or other and the title appealed to me.
It is a truly delightful book which the author does a beautiful job of
performing. He gives us a delicate, insightful, and humorous description of
what it is like growing up poor, the child of a single mother, bi-racial in
a racially and class segregated society. Although he is describing life in
South Africa, much of what he says is applicable to the kinds of issues that
black and brown people face here in America. Some of his explanations of the
choices made by young men living in the black townships, are clearly the
same as those made by many of our own youth. The story moves around in time
so that although the reader learns a great deal about the writer, it isn't
in a long flowing narrative. So at the end of the book, although the author
had clarified that he'd become successful in show business before emigrating
here, I wanted to know how it happened. Yes, he was a really intelligent and
resourceful young man. But the book left him having finished school with not
enough money for college and no workable plan forr the future. I'd love to
know what happened next. How did he get into show business and become
successful and when and how did he come to the US? But he chose to write
about his childhood and youth, and he did a fantastic job with that.
Miriam