The Ups and Downs of Life in the South African Hood

What I read:  Trevor Noah talks about how when hip-hop from the U.S. came to South Africa it was cool to be from "the Hood."

He started hanging out there and sold pirated CDs.  He and his friends were constantly making and spending money, so they never really got ahead.  He writes, "Hustling is to work what surfing the internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the internet - tweet, Facebook posts, lists- you've read the equivalent of a shit ton of book, but in fact you've read no books in a year.  When I look back on it, that's what hustling was.  It's maximal effort put into minimal gain.  It's a hamster wheel.  If I'd put all that energy into studying I'd have earned an MBA.  Instead I was majoring in hustling, something no university would give me a degree for" (Loc 3071).

At one point Trevor is sent to jail for driving a "stolen" car.  The car is not really stolen, it's just unregistered.  Because of this mix-up, though, Trevor gets arrested and spends a week in jail awaiting his trial.  At first he's very scared, then he gets a little comfortable there, and finally he is terrified that the will be sentenced to a longer time in prison.  His mother comes to his rescue.  

In the last chapter of the book, Trevor tells the terrifying story of how his mom got shot in the head by his stepdad.  Miraculously she survived the shooting.  Trevor talks about how his stepdad Abel was abusive to him and to his mother for years before she left him. Some time after she left him, he got a gun and attacked her for not reason.  He even shot her in front of their two sons.

What I thought about:
I thought the chapter about hustling in the hood was really interesting.  Trevor and his friends became like experts in what they did, but because it was petty crime there's no respect from anyone else.  People who study to become professionals get respect from their communities, but Trevor and his buddies were "professionals" at small crimes like pirating CDS.  No one is going to think that's great, though.  It's not a way that they can ever move ahead in their world.

I also thought a lot about domestic abuse when I read these chapters.  I have heard that it's almost more dangerous for a woman after she leaves an abusive husband or boyfriend than it is when she is still with him.  That's what happened to Trevor's mother and it's really frightening to think about.  In the book, that's when it seems like it's finally safe for her, but that's when Abel comes after her and tries to kill her.  It's really sad and scary.  It makes me think about all of the women in the world that are in a situation like this or that have been (Take Rihanna for example).  I hope all these women can be helped before it's too late.


What I conclude:  I learned a lot about apartheid from reading this book.  I also learned a lot about how South Africa was after apartheid ended.  Even though it had so many sad parts, it made me laugh a lot.  Some of the highlights were when he burned down that white person's house and when his friend named Hitler danced at a Jewish school.  While reading it felt like listening to his voice and it felt like a story being told rather than some really heavy factual book.  I really liked that about the book.  I totally recommend this book to anyone who likes Trevor Noah and wants to learn more about his life.  I also recommend it to anyone who is interested in finding out more about South Africa during apartheid. 

Everybody's Buddy Nobody's Friend

What I Read: While reading, I found out that when Trevor was in middle school he didn't have any friends but he was known throughout his new school. He explains how he would be the first one to reach the tuck shop (cafeteria). Because he was known in the school, other kids started asking him to buy their lunch for them. He could run faster than anyone else and he could line up first to get food, so that made him popular in a way.  But he still wasn't really a part of any group.

In these chapters Trevor tells a story about how he stole chocolates filled with alcohol.  He did this with his friend Teddy.  Teddy is one of Trevor's first best friends, and he is black.  He is the son of a maid who lives in Trevor's neighborhood.  Trevor and Teddy spend most of their time together.  One night, they get caught stealing the chocolates.  They go separate ways as they run away from the cops and we realize that Trevor escapes while Teddy gets arrested.  Soon the police contact the school authorities about the robbery and Trevor gets called in for questioning.  The police show Trevor a black and white tape of what happened that night.

On the tape it looks like Trevor is white next to Teddy, who is black.  The camera captures Trevor's skin tone as white even if he only has light skin.  "These people have been so f**ked by their own construct of race that they could not see that the white person they were looking for is sitting right in front of them" (Noah, Location 2237).



Trevor also talks about romance issues he's had during his adolescence.  His first crush is a "coloured" girl and her name is Maylene.  Trevor and Maylene became a couple for Valentine's Day, but Maylene breaks up with him to stay with a handsome white boy.  Next, Trevor falls in love with Zaheera, but nothing ever happens because she moves away to the United States and Trevor never had the guts to tell her.  Despite the fact that Zaheera liked him too.

Last, Trevor talks about getting a date for senior prom.  He takes a girl called Babiki who is the most beautiful girl he's ever seen.  They have been going out for two months, but they have never spent time together alone.  He takes he to the dance and she refuses to get out of his car.  He figures out that she does not speak English.  She only speaks Pedi.  Trevor speaks many langauages but not Pedi.  He can't talk to her.  They are in a terrible situation and Trevor realizes that in all this month he's never really tried to talk to her.  

What I Thought About:  While reading these chapters I found out that after apartheid ended, South Africa had 11 official languages.  These aren't even all the languages, it's just the most common ones.  Trevor describes how common it is to not understand what other people are saying and how you get used to figuring out the gist of a conversation without really speaking that language.  He says that in his head, all conversations get remembered in English, although they are spoken in different languages.  This is something that I totally understand.  For example, even though I know that I had a conversation with a friend in Spanish, it comes back to me in English when I think about it later.  I'm not sure why I do that, but it just happens.  The same seems to happen to Trevor, too.

The other issue from what I read that I thought about is the racism that so many people don't even know they have.  When Trevor and his friend were caught on camera shoplifting, they didn't even know that it was Trevor who was the "white" person on the tape because they couldn't figure out that he would look like that on video.  As you can tell from the picture, Trevor has sort of light skin.  Because of this, the camera captured him as white.  It seems incredible to me though, that the people looking for the boy in the video couldn't figure out that Trevor was that boy.

What I Conclude: I've always known that people were racist. When I was in 4th grade, a boy on the bus told me that I'm a white person who just paints herself black.  He said that because I'm much lighter than my dad.  I was hurt, but I wasn't that surprised because I know that people are often racist and really ignorant about racism.  

Still, though, some of the stories from this part of the book still shocked me.  Like Trevor says in the book, he couldn't believe that people were so colorblind because of racism.  I couldn't believe it either.  It all sort of reminds me of when Mattel released the "Oreo Fun Barbie" and it somehow didn't occur to anyone that the black version of the doll would be really offensive to a lot of people.

Luckily, SNL was thinking more about the way that people perceive things when they put together this video.  Some people might find this offensive, but others think it's really funny.  Either way, it shows how even when people try to be sensitive about racism, they sometimes still do racist things.

I also really relate to the parts about language because I speak two languages too.  It makes me sad to think about how Babiki felt because she speaks a language that is one of the 11 main languages of the country, but isn't spoken a lot.  That would be so hard.  I'm so lucky to speak more than one language from the time that I was born.

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.  

Living In Apartheid

What I Read: In the new book I've started reading called Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, the author talks about his life in South Africa.  He was born in the early 1980s when apartheid was still happening.  This was a major problem for so many people but especially for him since his father is a white man from Switzerland and his mother is a black Xhosa woman from South Africa.  that's why the book is called Born a Crime - because Trevor was literally born a crime in his country.

Trevor Noah today

Trevor as a little boy with his mother

Trevor and his father

In the first chapters of this book, there's a lot of information. Trevor starts the story by talking about going to church with his mother. They went to three different churches every Sunday - white church, black church, and mixed church.  Trevor's mother is very religious and believes that God controls their lives and destinies.

Trevor and his mother were very poor when he was a child.  She was a single mother with a mixed child and all of that made life hard.  Still, they had lots of family around them.  They often lived without running water and electricity and they had an outhouse. Trevor tells a really funny story about going to the bathroom on the kitchen floor because he it was raining and he didn't want to go to the outhouse and get wet.  The other members of his mother's family didn't really know how to treat him since they thought of him as the "white" member of the family.  He didn't get beat by his grandmother, aunts and uncles as much as the other grandkids in the family because they were afraid to hit a "white" person.

When Trevor was growing up he and his mother moved a lot and he went to a few different schools.  It was always hard for him to fit in, especially in a new school because he didn't know if he belonged with white kids or black kids.  Most people thought he was "coloured," which is the word for people with two mixed parents in South Africa. but really he wasn't because he wasn't part of that group and culture in his country. 

Children who were classified as "coloured" under apartheid

At school one time, a white woman talked to Trevor about the class that he was in.  He got put in the A Class for smart students and it was mostly white kids.  He wanted to move to the B Class.  The passage below comes from the book:

     "Oh, no," she said.  "I don't think you want to do that."
     "Why not?"
     "Because those kids are... you know."
     "No, I don't know.  What do you mean?"
     "Look," she said, "you're a smart kid.  You don't want to be in that class."
     "But aren't the classes the same?  English is English.  Math is math."
     "Yeah, but that class is... those kids are gonna hold you back. You want to be in the smart class."
     "But surely there must be some smart kids in the B Class."
     "No, there aren't."
     "But all my friends are there."
     "You don't want to be friends with those kids."
     "Yes, I do."
     We went back and forth.  Finally she gave me a stern warning.
     "You do realize the effects this will have on your future?  You do understand what you're giving up?  This will impact the opportunities you'll have open to you for the rest of your life."
     "I'll take that chance."
(Noah, Location 900-914).

What I Thought About:  In the passage above, it's clear that even after apartheid ended, racism was and still is a real problem in South Africa.  This reminds me of Ecuador and the United States and most other countries that I've seen.  Sometimes people aren't openly racist but like the lady in the quote above you can tell that people have racist attitudes right under the surface.  She might not have said anything racist, but she showed racism in her attitude about the white class and the black class.

The other thing that I really thought about when I was reading this book is the part when Trevor talks about language.  He says that in his life, it's language and being able to talk to people that unites people even more than race.  "That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.  I became a chameleon.  My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color.  If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu.  If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana.  Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you" (Noah, Location 853).

I can apply this quote to my own life because if I weren't bilingual, I wouldn't be able to communicate with my mom's or dad's side of the family because if I spoke only English, I couldn't talk to my dad's family and vice versa.  When I think about my friends, I realize how lucky and I am to be able to communicate with them.  If I go out in the world and meet someone who looks like me and I want to be friends with them, if that person speaks a language I don't understand, we're not likely to end up becoming friends.

What I Conclude:  In conclusion, I've already learned a lot from the first five chapters of this book.  I didn't used to know about the classifications of race under apartheid in South Africa and I especially didn't know about people who were called "coloured."  Trevor Noah thinks of himself as black and I think of myself as black too, but under apartheid, we would both be classified as a crime.  This is weird to think about because we both look most like the group called "coloured."  It's hard for me to accept a government deciding my race for me and I can't believe that Trevor Noah and everyone else in South Africa had to put up with that.  I also can't believe that apartheid happened so recently.

Below is a video of Trevor Noah singing a song in Xhosa with clicks in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baEiWB2aM9Y

A Flower Shop... Maybe

What I read:  After Joseph and Bull meet, Sumiko's auntie gets a job in Chicago.  The plan is that Sumiko and her brother Tak-Tak will move with the aunt to Chicago, but Sumiko doesn't want to.  Sumiko also realizes that Bull is going to join the army and fight in the war.  Sumiko feels scared about all these changes.

Sumiko is determined not to leave with her aunt.  She tries asking other family members to take her and her brother in.  Nothing works.  She even talks to Frank and Frank says that she should go with her aunt to Chicago.

Finally at the end, Sumiko realizes it's best for her and her brother to move to Chicago and leave the camp to start a new life.  On the last day, Frank comes to say goodbye to Sumiko and to wish her luck. They promise to write letters and stay in touch.  Frank is one of the first friends Sumiko has ever had.  Sumiko thinks about opening a flower shop in the future when she is grown up and the war is over.

What I thought about:  Even though it hard to start a new life, I believe that Sumiko and her family made the right choice.  It was also the bravest choice.  They were comfortable living in the camp, but they realized that they couldn't be imprisioned as the war is going on.  No one knew how long the war would last.  Making the choice to leave the camp is risky but it reminds them that they have the right to be free.  They make the hard choice to be free over being comfortable.

When Sumiko talks to Frank about moving to Chicago, Frank says that she should go because he's trying to be a good friend and help her have a good life.  Sumiko doesn't understand this at first and thinks that he wants to get rid of her.  Sumiko has never had any friends before and so she doesn't really understand the meaning of friendship.  She doesn't think about how Frank would rather have her there but tells her to leave because leaving is the best thing for her.  I think that a friend like Frank is truely a good friend and the best kind of friend a person can have because he wants what's best for her instead of himself.

What I conclude:  I learned a lot from this book about how Japanese, Japanese Americans, and American Indians were treated during world war II.  Despite the fact that this isn't a true story, you learn so much about interracial friendship, stereotypes, and freedom.  For example, Japanese and Japanese Americans are forced to live in internment camps and American Indians aren't supposed to have names of their culture.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes learning about history or who likes historical fiction.  But I also recommend this book to people who think that interracial friendship is a topic worth reading about. 

Interracial Friends

What I read: On Saturday morning, Sumiko takes her cousin Bull to the river where they meet Frank and his older brother Joseph.  At first, Joseph and Bull introduce themselves respectfully but a little distant.  But later Joseph and Bull talk about their different farms and they warm up to each other.  By the end of the meeting they seem friendly.




Joseph is about the go fight in the war in about a month. This upsets Frank because all of his older brothers are already fighting.  This is obviously dangerous because they might die in the war.

  

What I thought about: When Sumiko brings Bull to meet Frank and Joseph, she asks Frank why they have English sounding names instead of "Indian" names.  Frank says it's because the state of Arizona won't let them.  This makes me think about how unfair it is to not follow your own culture.  For example, in the state of Arizona American Indians aren't allowed to have names from their own culture.  

They must have English names like Frank and Joseph.  I think this is wrong because it's horrible to lose your culture. 
Another example is that my name is Nia.  My name can be pronounced in both English and Spanish, but my name is actually Swahili.  My parents thought this was a good name for me.  It seems unfair that some government would tell them that they couldn't name me that.  

What I conclude: As I read these chapters it reminded me about how possible it is to have friendships between people that come from two different races.  In the book Bull and Joseph accept each others differences and cultures.  So do Sumiko and Frank.  It can be hard to break barriers sometimes, but once you do you discover that you have more in common than you think.  For instance, my best friend in Los Angeles is white and her parents are from Australia.  I'm black and from Ecuador.  My mom is white and my dad is black.  Just because my friend and I are from different places and races doesn't mean we must hate each other.

The Wall

What I read: In the last chapters, the American Indians decide to build a wall between their reservation and the Japanese internment camp.  They say it's to keep cows "inside" their own farms.  But the Japanese disagree and therefore hate what the Indians are doing.

Sumiko and Frank become friends after Sumiko saves Frank from getting beat up by Japanese boys.  In fact, Sumiko herself hits a Japanese boy with a stick and breaks his nose.  She does this to defend Frank.

Sumiko and Frank are planning to meet with each other and introduce their older family members.  Frank's older brother is a farmer and wants to meet Sumiko's cousin Bull so that they can talk about farming practices.  Bull is a very skilled farmer with lots of experience, but it's not clear if he'll be okay to meet with a Native American.

What I thought about: Reading this part reminds me of the Berlin Wall and Donald Trump saying that he wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.  First, the Berlin Wall was built to separate Eastern Germans from Western Germans because both sides were part of different countries.  They didn't have the freedom to go back and forth across the city of Berlin just like Donald Trump wants to stop people crossing the Mexican-American border.

In the book, the Japanese people enclosed by the wall that the American Indians have put up.  It's sad for Sumiko because it's ruining her garden that she keeps with her friend Mr. Moto.  It's not nearly as bad having a wall blocking your garden as it is having a wall blocking your freedom.

What I conclude: 
 Thinking about the fact that Donald Trump wants to build a wall makes me think that the United States hasn't learned from their mistakes they have made in the past.  For example, sending Japanese and Japanese Americans to internment camps was a huge mistake in history.  Now many Americans are excited about discriminating against a group of people again.  We think that we learn from our mistakes in the past, but that's not always the case.  That's not happening now.  By reading these chapters, it makes me think about how ignorant Americans have been throughout history and continue to be.  It makes me really sad to think about this.