by Trevor Noah (non-fiction, 2016) “Stories
From a South African Childhood”
The
author Trevor Noah, as an adult, earns his living as an international
comedian, basing his humor on the inconsistencies of the people and
the society around him. He grew up in South Africa in the era of
apartheid, when
the white South African minority declared it a crime to have social
contact with anyone of the colored majority races. Separate schools,
separate public seating, eating places, neighborhoods, were enforced
during the rule of South Africa's National Party, from 1948 to 1990.
With a black mother and a Swiss father, his parents could face
five-year jail terms, and he himself could legally be seized and sent
to an orphanage simply by the fact of his birth.
His
mother raised him; contact with his father was secret and infrequent.
His mother was a rebel by nature, working as a typist for a
pharmaceutical firm, defiantly attending several churches – black,
white, or mixed – prudent, but not caring about other people's
opinion of her. But she loved her child unconditionally, and vowed he
would have a better childhood than hers had been. She disciplined him
when he needed it – which was often – made sure he attended
school and church; and saw that he had a safe home.
Apartheid
never
made sense to Trevor, nor did the Catholic church, which refused his
mother communion, because she wasn't Catholic.
Trevor
pointed out to his Catholic school teacher, “Jesus wasn't Catholic,
he was Jewish.”
“Well,
yes.”
“So
you're telling me that if Jesus walked into your church right now,
Jesus would not be allowed to have the body and blood of Jesus?”
“Well
. . . uh . . . um . . .
“
One
morning before mass,Trevor was hungry; he sneaked behind the altar
and drank the whole bottle of grape juice and ate the whole bag of
Eucharist. He was caught, and laughed while he was being punished.
The school principal recommended he see a psychiatrist. “Mrs. Noah,
your son was laughing while we were hitting him.”
“Well,
clearly you don't know how to hit a kid. That's your problem, not
mine. Trevor's never laughed when I've
hit him, I can tell you.”
His
mother thought the school rules were stupid.
“She
taught me to question the system,” wrote Trevor. “The only way it
backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned
her.”
Trevor
had other problems. In a land where blacks and whites were separated,
he was neither. Nor was he Chinese nor Indian. He was “colored”,
and belonged to no group in schools he attended. Rather than risk
exclusion, he found himself accepted when he could make the other
kids laugh. When apartheid
ended
in 1990, he discovered his niche in the entertainment field. His
story of his partnership with his mother is a mixture of hilarity and
terror.
He
almost lost her when she later entered a marriage that turned very,
very bad.
Thought-provoking
and a good read.
