Thursday, December 29, 2016

Figuring Yourself Out

What I read: Trevor explains how he was naughty when he was a little boy.  His mom always tried to find ways to discipline him. She used to make him write letters instead of arguing with her, and she would write letters back to him.  Once he burned down a white family's house, and this was during apartheid.  It's unbelievable to think that this actually happened.


Trevor talks about other things in these chapters too.  For example, he talks about the time he had a dog that was called Fufi.  Trevor and his mom thought that Fufi was really dumb, but in fact, she was deaf.  Trevor also talks about how as a young adult he tracked down his father, who he hadn't seen in about 10 years.  He tried to get to know his father but found out that he was really secretive.  Trevor also tells more about his step-father in these chapters, and we find out that his step-father, called Abel, was a really abusive alcoholic.  Trevor describes Abel as being sinister and tells a terrible story about how Abel beat up some neighborhood kids who were picking on Trevor.  Abel was a full grown man and he publically beat a 12-year-old boy.  Trevor Noah writes, "I have never enjoyed anything as much as I enjoyed that moment.  Revenge truly is sweet.  It takes you to a dark place, but, man, it satisfies a thirst.  Then there was the strangest moment where it flipped.  I caught a glimpse of the look of terror in the boy's face, and I realized that Abel had gone past getting revenge for me.  He wasn't doing this to teach the kid a lesson.  He was just beating him" (Noah, Location 1810-1815). 











What I thought about: In these chapters, Trevor gets into the adults in his life who raised him and influenced him to become a man.  This makes me think about my own life and the adults I have in mine.  My brother and I have been raised in the same household and it seems like we should have the same adults in our lives.  That's not all true, though because my brother has a different mother than me. So I have major influences from my mom and my dad, and so does my brother but he also has his own mother who is not really an influence in my life.  She is really important in his life, though.  At the same time, he has my mom and so do I since we've lived together since he was really young.


Reading these chapters, I also thought a lot about discipline.  Discipline is viewed differently by children and their parents.  Trevor talks about his experiences of being under his mother's rules.  It seems like he thought about it differently as a kid than he does now.  I wonder how I will see things differently when I'm an adult.  For example, my mom is annoying in many ways.  I think that in the future I might actually appreciate her for being annoying.  I might.



What I conclude:  By reading these chapters, I learned more about Trevor's life with adults during apartheid and after.  Sometimes I think that when things don't go my way it's the end of the world.  Then I think about how it would feel to be Trevor Noah during apartheid.  He had many issues with this mom that feel normal in my world.  But then I think about how Trevor and his mother had to hide the fact that they were mother and son, and that seems like a much more difficult life.  

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