Just Read: Born A Crime by Trevor Noah

I read this book sometime in March, but then after being on track for few months - reading interesting books, writing blog posts, learning Japanese, the other side of my life happened and it's September now.

Even it's been so many months, I still relish this book. The stories from his childhood during apartheid and after are beautifully written, and even though every story is written with good dose of humor, you see the big issues - racism, prejudice, poverty faced by colored community in South Africa under apartheid. Yes, it's Trevor Noah memoir, but nowhere he is trying to show himself as the HERO. Clearly that title goes to his mother - a rebel, fearless and very religious woman.

It may sound odd, but I rarely watched Daily show with Jon Stewart, mainly because by the time I got settled in U.S. as a new immigrant he was almost ready to pass the baton to Trevor Noah. And with U.S. primary and election (and yes, Donald Trump) my interest in U.S. politics increased, and rather than getting my dose through news channels I primarily watched John Oliver, Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers. So for me Daily Show always belonged to Trevor Noah, which was the main reason for  me to pick this book.

And I loved this book. His stories are fascinating. Either it's going to black, colored and white churches on Sundays with his mother, being thrown out of car while sleeping and asked to run,  watching the surveillance video of him shoplifting with police. He never tries to give out morality lessons, but you still learn a lot about life in a place which was hit hard by apartheid and poverty.

I don't think anyone could have explained apartheid in more understandable way, as did Trevor Noah - "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."