The author, Trevor Noah is a well known South African born comedian and host of The Daily Show. His book intrigued me before even reading the very first chapter. Why? The book opens with a chilling scene of his mother pushing him from a moving vehicle, in that moment, i just knew i was in for a fascinating read. He dedicated his book to his mother: "For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man". More than anything I was hooked on wanting to know just how Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah molded her Soweto-born son?
Without me ruining the whole book for you out of excitement, I just want to emphasise how good this book is. The book is filled with such funny exchanges between Trevor Noah and his mother from cover to cover. You get to visualise the directness of Noah and the funny side about growing up biracial in the post-apartheid era. His mother is shown as an influential partner at every step along his journey, "I understood even from an early age that we weren’t just mother and son. We were a team."
In several ways, Ms. Noah reminds me of my very African mother that I admire, a black woman who wants better for her children and she therefore teaches them how to survive in a society built to be against black people - how to dream even bigger and never let oppression define them.
Now as a growing African black woman, I understand the racism and gender discrimination faced daily, much to Ms. Noah's experience. She had to deal with the expectations of a society larger than her, as well as her own culture. Noah's mother was a rebel in a society that bashed and misunderstood determination.
For some context, Trevor Noah was born in 1984, literally a product of a crime, in South Africa's history books, this is when apartheid's miscegenation laws (the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types) made interracial relationships illegal. Noah's Xhosa mother and his Swiss-German father, it was an illegal union that Noah's father's name isn't on his birth certificate.
Noah writes, “Integration by its nature was a political act”.
Throughout the book, Noah reveals many examples of his mother's stubborn determination to prevent apartheid from suffocating her free spirit, and deprive her son of opportunities. Humor became a survival mechanism for both her and her son. “If my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind,” Noah writes. Even before they knew apartheid would end, she wanted him to live freely. She took him to places that black South Africans considered “white things,” like ice rinks and the suburbs, “because even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.” POWERFUL!
This reminded me a lot of when I was growing up in Zimbabwe. My mother always encouraged me to reach higher and she enabled me by allowing me to explore my surroundings and the world around me. Though our life was not the easiest, I never went hungry, naked, I had a full education and through it all we lived a fulfilling life, we had a taste of the high life and the low and I am forever grateful to my mother. We were more than just mother & daughter, we were a strong team.
I would be honored to be half as strong & determined of a woman as she is. Quick tribute to the woman who birthed me because why not? I LOVE YOU MAMA!
I will end part 1 of the review here, but look forward to the second part. Hopefully it will be just as captivating. Thank you for reading,
Love,
Tarie Speaks.
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