Trevor Noah’s memoir ‘Born a Crime’ is an insightful read about apartheid and identity
“That’s what apartheid did: It convinced every group that it was because of the other race that they didn’t get into the club. It’s basically the bouncer at the door telling you, ‘We can’t let you in because your friend Darren and his ugly shoes.’ So you look at Darren and say, ‘Screw you, Black Darren. You’re holding me back.’ Then when Darren goes up, the bouncer says, ‘No, it’s actually your friend Sizwe and his weird hair.’ So Darren says, ‘Screw you, Sizwe,’ and now everyone hates everyone. But the truth is that none of you were ever getting into that club.” (pg. 120)
When Trevor Noah took over The Daily Show in 2015, no one really knew what we were getting in Jon Stewart’s successor. A South African comedian? Specifically, a relatively unknown South African comedian? Since then, he’s certainly proven more than capable of handling the job behind the desk, and his memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood is further evidence of his ability to contextualize and comment on culture and current events.
While Born a Crime tells a very personal story of Noah’s experience growing up during apartheid, and post-apartheid, in South Africa, Noah makes a point of explaining the history of apartheid, dating back as far as the 17th century when Dutch and British settlers colonized South Africa. Between each chapter, the book is broken up with brief asides offering a somewhat more accessible understanding of how apartheid was created, the various divisions (based on tribes, race, ethnicity, language, etc.) that existed, and the flawed and hypocritical nature of the system itself.
Noah is able to further underscore his experience navigating the intricacies of apartheid in that he was mixed race, having a black mother and a white father (ultimately classified as “colored”), which was illegal. Noah explains, “Race-mixing proves that races can mix — and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.” Primarily raised by his black mother while he himself was classified as colored in a world built on segregation, Noah grew up in a unique and challenging situation in terms of his own identity and where he fit in to society. At times he details how he was an outcast and a loner, and how he simply did not fit in with his relatives, at school, or the neighborhoods he grew up in; at other times he highlights how he was able to embrace his lack of cultural identity to be a “chameleon” of sorts.
Noah introduces the context of language being a major barrier that existed, although one that he was ultimately able to get around, stating:
“Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says ‘We’re the same.’ A language barrier says ‘We’re different.’ The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we’d fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different.” (Pg. 49–50)
While language served as a barrier, Noah’s ability to speak several languages including, but not limited to, English, Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, and Afrikaans, was one way he was able to fit in. When recounting his experience at an integrated primary school meeting black kids who spoke different tribal languages, he says, “One kid said something in Zulu, and I replied to him in Zulu. Everyone cheered. Another kid said something Xhosa, and I replied to him in Xhosa. Everyone cheered.” He notes that using language he was able to flip the perception that he was different, explaining, “Because of my color, they thought I was a colored person, but speaking the same languages meant that I belong to their tribe.”
Perhaps more than anything though, Noah’s memoir serves as a profound love letter and tribute to his mother. He draws a fully realized picture of his mother, Patricia, “as stubborn as she is religious” and as a “strict disciplinarian,” while admitting that he himself was “naughty as shit” growing up. Although they would clash, he clearly shows the close bond and loving relationship they had, and how he viewed them as a team. It’s certainly not lost on Noah that his mother’s stubborn nature was a wildly positive trait, and is where he learned to slip through the cracks and flaws of apartheid, and never fully ceded to it.
“My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid — not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered…
“Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that my mother started her little project, me, at a time when she could not have known that apartheid would end. There was no reason to think it would end; it had seen generations come and go. I was nearly six when Mandela was released, ten before democracy finally came, yet she was preparing me to live a life of freedom long before we knew freedom would exist.” (Pg. 73–74)
While Noah grew up during apartheid and was as much a victim of it as anyone, Patricia refused to submit and raise him under apartheid and the belief that he was subject to the limitations of it. Once, Noah asked his mother, “Why didn’t we go to Switzerland?” and she answered, “This is my country. Why should I leave?”
Noah’s defiance of apartheid was born of hers. Just as his mother chose not to live a life entirely dictated by apartheid and found ways around it, Noah chose not to be the outcast that apartheid told him he was. Instead, as he did with language, he found ways to fit in, he found his place. “I wasn’t popular, but I wasn’t an outcast. I was everywhere with everybody, and at the same time I was all by myself.”
In a place and time in which identity was strictly defined by the divisions of apartheid, this is ultimately not a story of finding identity within apartheid. But rather, Born a Crime is Noah’s journey of creating his identity despite apartheid.