REVIEW OF BORN A CRIME BY TREVOR NOAH

Name of book: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Name of author: Trevor Noah

Genre: Memoir

Year of Publication: 2016

Publishers: Spiegel & Grau, New York

Name of Reviewer: Chidiebere Kalu

Born a Crime is the compelling, inspiring, and comically magnificent story of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

It is an engaging, fast-paced and vivid memoir, traversing Noah’s early childhood, confined by the absurdities of apartheid, where he could not walk openly with either of his parents, where he was often closeted inside his grandmother’s two-roomed home, where he was mistaken for white, through to his troubled years at school, his brief incarceration and to his budding success as a hustler selling pirated CDs while working as a DJ at parties; a book that would make you laugh and cry, all at the same time.

Noah was literally “born a crime” because his Xhosa mother had conceived a child with a white Swiss-German, which was illegal at the time (culprits were punished with five years imprisonment).

And while Noah was born in 1984, in the turbulent dying days of apartheid (he was only six when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in 1990), the world into which he was delivered was riven with the deep scars of history, history of violence, inequality, racism and injustice.

These stories, exquisitely written, are set in a world quite like our own but at the same time utterly different. For heaven's sake, who goes to church three times on Sunday to Black, White and Coloured churches? Who goes to jail for (not) stealing a car rather than face the wrath of his mother? Who gets a prom date with the most beautiful girl around, but one who doesn't speak the language and is extremely unsociable to boot? Absolutely bizarre events.

It's a brilliant story, very funny, and sadly critical too. Two worlds collide, black and white, and neither understands why the other is so offended.

The book has the themes of racism, apartheid, religion and most especially, the theme of mother's love speckled throughout the contents of the memoir.

It chronicles the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother: his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah - his mother - was a powerhouse, a strong woman in every sense. She's a warrior; intelligent, kind, hardworking and the quintessential prototype of what every mother should be like; even though she was extremely religious.

And this memoir, brimming with emotion, also serves as a tribute to all the hardworking mothers out there.

“There was no stepfather in the picture yet, no baby brother crying in the night. It was me and her, alone. There was this sense of the two of us embarking on a grand adventure. She’d say things to me like, “It’s you and me against the world.” I understood even from an early age that we weren’t just mother and son. We were a team.”

One good thing about this book is that the mind and heart of the reader would be fully in the seventh heaven while reading everything Trevor went through to get to where he is today, and everyone that played a role in that journey.

While some of the stories would definitely break the heart of any reader, Trevor Noah always managed to bring in his gold humour to ease the tension. There are a couple of chapters that would take a hold of your soul and won’t let go because either they were extremely hilarious (TREVOR, PRAY & LOOPHOLES) or entirely heart-shattering (MY MOTHER’S LIFE)...or both.

Gradually and without doubt, you'd come to admire Trevor Noah's character and honesty as you read further.

The evils of apartheid are splattered all over the place; in fact you’d never know how malevolent the apartheid rule at South Africa was till you read this book.

In what world can a man standing in front of a policeman not be identified on the video they are both watching of his best friend shoplifting and he with him? But he isn't. Because of the exposure of the video the black figure appeared black but the coloured one, Trevor, appeared white. The police were unable to link in their heads the features of the man on the screen with the one in front of them who was a suspect, because he was white. These South African policemen were blinded by their prejudice, which was rather lucky for Trevor.

The book will take you deep into the world of the non-white life of South Africa mostly since apartheid ended. It is funny but at the same time tragic, heart-warming and filled with all sorts of ‘wtf-itude.’

It's tribal and urban and mostly very third world. It's quite something to incorporate all those elements in one book, and boast only in ways that are more to do with accomplishment than with ego.

But if you don't like politics this isn't for you. Every single incident no matter how funny and how light they are, drives home the dismal reality that race decides everything in South Africa.

If I'm to rate this book, I'll give it at least four stars out of five. This is not any type of hype or exaggeration, the book deserves every kind of great compliment it gets; a must read.