Book Notes – In this series, I share my insights, ideas, and reviews of my favourite books, whose topics are wide-ranging.
Rating – 8.5/10
Amazon Link – BORN A CRIME: STORIES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILDHOOD : Noah, Trevor: Amazon.in: Books
Insights and Review
Whenever there is a lot of hype around a book, I approach it with a healthy amount of scepticism. So when this book landed in my mail while I was in boarding school, I trod carefully. Back then, I had no way of knowing that there would be a long queue of people waiting for their chance to read it, that my copy would get lost within this queue, and that I would ultimately need to buy a new copy.
That’s how much my entire batch loved this book.
Part of it has to do with the guy himself. Trevor is funny, and that’s because he gets humour. He is one of that rare breed of comedians who genuinely grasp the mechanics of a good joke. This shines through the writing. I mean, the apartheid was a horrible time, and Trevor grew up in South Africa with vestiges of this prejudiced era. Writing about it with gravitas and humour is a task no one but Trevor can pull off.
In an interview with Oprah, he describes the book as a story of his mother, where he is just her “punk-ass sidekick”. That’s such a good description of the book. Patricia Noah is a “badass” woman, as Trevor puts it. She raised a coloured child in South Africa at a time when such kids were being whisked away. The book shows you what she had to go through while never descending into a sad, sombre tone that risks losing the reader.
One favourite part, which I think gives you an insight into Trevor’s character, is an anecdote where he describes almost being mugged.
“[Language] became a tool that served me my whole life. One day as a young man I was walking down the street, and a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me, closing in on me, and I could hear them talking to one another about how they were going to mug me. “Asibambe le autie yomlungu. Phuma ngapha mina ngizoqhamuka ngemuva kwakhe.” “Let’s get this white guy. You go to his left, and I’ll come up behind him.” I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run, so I just spun around real quick and said, “Kodwa bafwethu yingani singavele sibambe umuntu inkunzi? Asenzeni. Mina ngikulindele.” “Yo, guys, why don’t we just mug someone together? I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
They looked shocked for a moment, and then they started laughing. “Oh, sorry, dude. We thought you were something else. We weren’t trying to take anything from you. We were trying to steal from white people. Have a good day, man.” They were ready to do me violent harm, until they felt we were part of the same tribe, and then we were cool. That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”
His ability to switch between languages allowed him to mix with other people. He wasn’t quite black, and he was not white. He was in between, and that made his world unique.
Trevor has gone through unimaginable trauma, something you wouldn’t realise watching his standups. His stepfather shot his mother point blank, which, by some miracle, missed her brain. I cannot imagine what that must have been like for her, for him, and the rest of his family. To be able to make jokes about something like that takes a different level of courage.
Of course, rereading opens your eyes to many sections where you’re like, “Hmm, I would have written that differently”. But that is a question of preference. There were moments in his childhood when I felt things could have picked up the pace, like his stint with computers.
But these are minor gripes, and I’m wondering whether I’m finding faults just for the sake of it. Identity, humour, tragedy, and emotion—this book has it all. Read it, and it will leave you changed.
Favourite Quotes
“The Zulu went to war with the white man. The Xhosa played chess with the white man. For a long time neither was particularly successful, and each blamed the other for a problem neither had created. Bitterness festered. For decades those feelings were held in check by a common enemy. Then apartheid fell, Mandela walked free, and black South Africa went to war with itself.”
“When it was time to pick my name, she chose Trevor, a name with no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family. It’s not even a Biblical name. It’s just a name. My mother wanted her child beholden to no fate. She wanted me to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.”
“Whenever times were really tough we’d fall back on dog bones. My mom would boil them for soup. We’d suck the marrow out of them. Sucking marrow out of bones is a skill poor people learn early. I’ll never forget the first time I went to a fancy restaurant as a grown man and someone told me, “You have to try the bone marrow. It’s such a delicacy.
It’s divine.” They ordered it, the waiter brought it out, and I was like, “Dog bones, motherfucker!” I was not impressed.”
“The curse that colored people carry is having no clearly defined heritage to go back to. If they trace their lineage back far enough, at a certain point it splits into white and native and a tangled web of “other.” Since their native mothers are gone, their strongest affinity has always been with their white fathers, the Afrikaners. Most colored people don’t speak African languages. They speak Afrikaans. Their religion, their institutions, all of the things that shaped their culture came from Afrikaners.
The history of colored people in South Africa is, in this respect, worse than the history of black people in South Africa. For all that black people have suffered, they know who they are. Colored people don’t.”
“ “My child, you must look on the bright side.”
“What? What are you talking about, ‘the bright side’? Mom, you were shot in the face. There is no bright side.”
“Of course there is. Now you’re officially the best-looking person in the family.” “
