(stories from a South African childhood)

~ Trevor Noah

A memoir

Trevor Noah is a gifted human, and an excellent writer with an indomitable spirit and heart that speaks through his words.

I’ll start by quoting from this memoir: “I lived inside my head. To this day you can leave me for hours and I’m perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have to remember to be with people.”

Noah is an entertainer, and a hefty one, with few to compete with the likes of him, and yet this young boy says this.

I love my own company too, but I also love people. There’s no contradiction. I get it.

Born a Crime was a shattering book for me; raw and untamed. I learnt of South Africa and its past, and understood what it meant to be caged. It made me weep, as much as it made me repeatedly realize what a privileged life I lead, despite all its downs, because they truly paled in comparison to Noah’s life.

The hero of Trevor Noah’s memoir is definitely his mother; a woman who never gave up, a woman who had such unshakable faith that when all the chips were down, she dusted herself and got on with it. If this isn’t inspiring enough, what might be? When we talk about grief, torture, misery, lack of basic amenities, a life which shreds every ounce of dignity you have, and you still pray and teach your child by your actions, that nothing can rob you of hope and a will to keep living with an innate strength, you’ve offered him far more than any material richness can. That was his mother.

When people left South Africa, for Switzerland for example, which in Noah’s mind was an easy out, she said to him, “Because I am not Swiss, this is my country. Why should I leave?”

And the most important lesson she gifted him was: “Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” she said, “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.”

I know that this is one of the hardest lessons of life, and I reread this counsel from Trevor Noah’s mother over and over. I’m not bitter, but a part of me still holds the pain that life has dealt me. Noah learnt and gets on with his life. We watch him.

We know that he listened to his mother’s words with his heart.

‘In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto.’ And they did.

The memoir is racy, and the many incidents, humoristic on the surface, describe the South Africa of his childhood, and the discriminatory conduct the families faced. Its core is hardship and the daily fight to find a happy way out of it.

Never does Noah make us feel that there was a compromise. Whatever life dealt him, he made of it a winning scenario.

As a coloured boy Noah never felt he belonged to either the white group, or the black. When he chose, it was to be with the blacks, his people. And he discovered that speaking many of the African languages endeared him to many ethnic groups, including English which he was perfectly comfortable speaking.

“That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than colour, defines who we are to people.

“I became a chameleon. My colour didn’t change, but I could change perception.”

I resonate so with the above, because I speak a few languages, and then when I do speak to the folk whose language it is, they are both surprised and pleased and I’m immediately acceptable.

Noah has interspersed his chapters with facts about apartheid, about the people of this world, of South Africa and what it can do to a race. It was both fascinating and horrifying.

As an Indian, we do our best to choose the right name for our kids, full of meaning and with hope that they’ll live up to the name. It is similar with his culture. “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.”

Picture Credit: Tembinkosi Sikupela/Unsplash.com

What a woman!

I finished the book with my heart in my mouth. There are a lot of takeaways and a lot to absorb. As I read, it was as if Trevor Noah was in the room with me, reading out his life. The quality of this memoir is like none other, and believe you me, I’ve read many a memoir.

If you’re willing to be exposed to a life led dotted with myriad incidents that can break or make you, pick up this book and allow yourself to read a true account of a life of survival, both instinctually and by sheer brain power. Watching, running, learning, applying- that’s Trevor Noah’s dictum. And then the deluge of emotions at the very end, the rawness of it.

I’ll end with a quote from Trevor Noah: “I never felt poor because our lives were so rich with experience. We were always out doing something, going somewhere.”

I could go on, but I shan’t. There are many highlighted paragraphs in my kindle, but may you find your own wisdom from the memoir.

©kamailninatesanMarch2022