The memoir is fully titled Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, and that title speaks both to Noah’s birth — he was born to his black mother and his white father when it was a crime for black and white people to mix in South Africa
I loved this book…immensely so. Trevor took me on a roller-coaster of emotions. I would laugh, cry, be mad and inspired all on one page.
Born a Crime is raw, vivid, and relatable. He doesn’t tip-toe around his harsh upbringing, nor does he present it in a way that one might feel sorry for him. Its a great balance of truth and resilience.
This Book I found to also to be an ode to his Mother.
“ My mother refused to be bound by the ridiculous ideas of what black people couldn’t or shouldn’t do. She raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back, I realized 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.”
On apartheid he wrote:
“Apartheid was perfect racism. It took centuries to develop, starting all the way back in 1652…..Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control. A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand. In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.”
Born A Crime is a coming of age book that is heartfelt, humorous, thought-provoking and ouh so divine.
Definitely worth a read.
Buy now on Amazon: Born A Crime
~Sibongile “sibo” Tshabalala
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