Thursday, December 27, 2018

"Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah

I've just finished reading the book by Trevor Noah - "Born a Crime". 
I was looking for a book that talked about racism and how other people dealt with it.

I had no idea whatsoever what the book will be about and I didn't even know about Trevor Noah as a comedian and a celebrity. I also didn't know anything about South Africa before I decided to read this book.

"This biography is life changing, eye-opening and inspiring. I am very happy to have read this book and learnt what I've learnt."

The book had so much in it - it was an autobiography, it contained so many stories on race and racism - a very unique experience of the author being neither black nor white. 

It has so many lessons on history and apartheid (which I've never heard of before). I was truly shocked by it and the only thing from my life that it reminded me of was the regime of Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy and the Cold War - spies, poverty, not being able to trust anyone, helplessness and hopelessness and not being able to survive, being forced to break the irrational rules just to survive.

The book is written in a very reader friendly language, very easy to read and if not for the author's humor, it would be a very sad book to read. I liked it how this book felt like life, how much wisdom it had on different topics - family, women, religion, culture, language, crime, life, equality, violence, ability to adapt, business. 

A very important character of this book was author's mother and it felt like this was the autobiography of them both. I was able to feel her energy, I was also learning from her lessons and she shocked me as well with her optimism and courage. You never know such people exist until you read a book like this. 

It was also a book about god and religion and actually it showed how miracles happened after miracles and how author's mother's belief in god helped her get through life in a proud way that she did. And it's a big inspiration and an example of faith and god.

The author mentions in the book that we should not be judgmental towards people because there is a very fine line between good and bad and between "criminal and a civilian" and I guess he proved his point later in the book.

The narrative was subtle, so unique that you just cannot judge people in this book. But it was very very intense, I actually cried at several parts of this autobiography and there were bits where I laughed a lot too.

It was very hard and painful to read some other parts, especially the ending, but the author and his mom made me laugh again.

So it was an amazing read and nothing like I've ever read before. It was a life changing and eye opening book and I'm happy it explained to me about what is "hood", apartheid and other things I didn't know. Sometimes it felt very humorous and then suddenly it would become extremely serious and wise.

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