It's Trevor Noah
2019
- nyt:childrens-middle-grade-hardcover=2019-04-28
- television broadcasting, biography
- television, juvenile literature
- south africa, biography
- united states, biography
- nonfiction
- memoir
- biography
- middle grade
- school
The story
*We do horrible things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. . . . We don’t see them as people.* Trevor Noah, host of *The Daily Show* on Comedy Central, shares his remarkable story of growing up in South Africa with a black South African mother and a white European father at a time when it was against the law for a mixed-race child to exist. But he did exist--and from the beginning, the often-misbehaved Trevor used his keen smarts and humor to navigate a harsh life under a racist government. In a country where racism barred blacks from social, educational, and economic opportunity, Trevor surmounted staggering obstacles and created a promising future for himself thanks to his mom’s unwavering love and indomitable will.
What it’s like
Quick, funny, and unflinchingly honest, this middle-grade memoir reads like a comic's conversational monologue set against apartheid-era Johannesburg and Soweto: short chapters, plain warm prose, and a voice that jumps from a schoolyard prank to a hard truth in a single sentence. The texture is of crowded minibus taxis, church pews on Sunday, and a mother's kitchen, with the sense of a bright kid always watching and calculating how to get through the day. Racial injustice and danger are present and told plainly, with some scenes of police brutality, a gun pointed at a family, and a lengthy account of a violent domestic situation, but nothing is dwelt on gratuitously and there is no gore. Its emotional register swings between laughter and quiet anger, and its central arc follows a clever, mischievous boy learning that his mother's stubborn love and his own wit can carry him past a system built to shut him out. It suits a rainy afternoon, a lunch break, or a long train ride, and it is for readers who want an uplifting, funny true story that doesn't look away from cruelty, including young readers and adults who enjoy accessible memoir.
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