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

Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah is a memoir focused on Noah's experience as a child of apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was modeled off of Jim Crow laws, taking place at the tail end of the Jim Crow era. The Jim Crow era ran from late 19th century through the 1960s; apartheid was 1948 to 1994. 

During apartheid, "all nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds," (Loc 1660). Noah shares that the worst way to insult "a colored person was to infer that they were in some way black," (Loc 1666). In the memoir, Noah's prevailing theme was that, being mixed, he did not fit in anywhere in large part due to the clear sociocultural delineation between races. This differentiation included different language schools. South Africa technically had 11 different languages, which served as another major cultural barrier between tribes (Loc 74). 

In one of many parallels to America, "Apartheid was a police state..in America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those happening to the same group of people at the same time," (Loc 322). In explaining how the atrocities of the apartheid are never taught in South Africa, it seemed to Noah that the mandate was "whatever you do, don't make the kids angry," (Loc 2461). This was the justification for recent sanitization of history courses in Florida public schools. 

A key reason for the missing history in regions in Africa is that, "when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It is harder to be horrified by a guess," (Loc 2637). This has rung true certainly in fact as well as my own personal experience. I've been trying to find books about different regional histories in Africa for well over a year, but the few books that do exist are usually written by the victors and do not cover histories prior to a conflict. 

Miscellaneous insight from the author:

- In talking about his relationship with his father, Noah says "being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being," (Loc 1578). I couldn't agree more. 

- Some native African history! "When Dutch colonists landed at the southern tip of Africa over three hundred years ago, they encountered an indigenous people known as the Khoisan. The Khoisan are the Native Americans of South Africa, a lost tribe of bushmen, nomadic hunter-gatherers distinct from the darker, Bantu speaking peoples who later migrated south to become the Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho tribes of modern South Africa," (Loc 1600). 

- You protect yourself from rejection by opening up. "You don't ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you're willing to share," (Loc 1934). 

This book is an easy and insightful read about personal experiences of South African apartheid from a unique perspective. I recommend.