![]() Dutch settlers took South African natives as slaves and mixed with the native Khoisan population, creating a distinctive mixed-race population known today as the Cape Coloureds, as well as fighting a number of wars against the Xhosa. In order to understand why the end of apartheid was so significant, it is crucial to understand the broader history of European colonialism and racism in South Africa, which largely begins with the establishment of a Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th century. The earliest years of Trevor Noah’s life were also some of the most consequential years in the history of South African history because they saw the erosion and ultimate defeat of the nation’s racist apartheid regime, which was then replaced with a democracy led by Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. By 2014, he landed a recurring role on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, then took over the hosting role in 2015, which propelled him to international fame. He hosted a number of major South African television shows and became one of the nation’s most prominent comedians before moving to the United States, where he was completely unknown, in 2011. After he finished high school, humor transformed from a means of coping with suffering to the foundation of his career: after a year DJing and selling CDs in the Johannesburg suburbs, he gained a substantial following in South Africa by hosting a youth radio show called Noah’s Ark and doing stand-up comedy. Born a Crime covers his life until the beginning of his career in the early 2000s, following his close relationship with his beloved mother, his attempts to articulate his complex identity in a nation that still clung tightly to racial hierarchy, and his struggle to overcome the poverty and violence that surrounded him. Born a Crime is a must listen.īORN A CRIME is now available in hardback, eBook and audiobook.Born to a Xhosa mother and a Swiss-German father in Johannesburg, Trevor Noah’s very existence as a mixed-race person was technically illegal until the end of South Africa’s white supremacist apartheid regime in 1994. ![]() His stories weave together to form a personal portrait of an unlikely childhood in a dangerous time, as moving and unforgettable as the very best memoirs and as funny as Noah's own hilarious stand-up. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Noah illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and an unflinching honesty. Born a Crime is equally the story of that young man's fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother - a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that ultimately threatens her own life. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the first years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, take him away.Ī collection of eighteen personal stories, Born a Crime tells the story of a mischievous young boy growing into a restless young man as he struggles to find his place in a world where he was never supposed to exist. Noah was born a crime, son of a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As host of the US hit show The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, he provides viewers around the globe with their nightly dose of biting satire, but here Noah turns his focus inward, giving readers a deeply personal, heartfelt and humorous look at the world that shaped him. One of the comedy world's brightest new voices, Trevor Noah is a light-footed but sharp-minded observer of the absurdities of politics, race and identity, sharing jokes and insights drawn from the wealth of experience acquired in his relatively young life. The compelling, inspiring, (often comic) coming-of-age story of Trevor Noah, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.
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