« For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man. »
Tell me why this line, and the dedication being at the end of the book, made me tear up 🥺
This felt like a love letter to his mother.

I wanted to read this book not because I am Trevor Noah’s biggest fan (I like him, but I’m no stan), but because of my interest on the apartheid in South Africa, and the state of affairs between the different racial groups. Noah did a good job explaining it to someone with little background. I appreciated that. His explanations served as a door to learning and researching more in depth about it, while still being interesting.

I laughed out loud twice in the beginning of the book, but I’d say in the third half the high school stories get a bit too long, so I was glad when he addressed the domestic abuse and opened up more about that situation.

”the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”
This line had me pondering the stories I’ve heard from women who went through this experience. And it made me really understand that an abusive man can only feel in power when he changes the status quo. There is no satisfaction in controlling a woman who is already in line.

This memoir was equal parts enjoyable, heart-wrenching, and amusing. I only wished to see more of Trevor Noah’s success story. How he started up in comedy, how and why he moved to America, and the whole story of his success. But maybe that’s a story for another book.

The racial commentary, especially in this political atmosphere hit hard. Here are some of the things I highlighted:

“What was ironic to me was that white people had spent years seeing video of black people being beaten to death by other white people, but this one video of a black man kicking a cat, that’s what sent them over the edge.”

“The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all.”

“All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds.”

“I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them.”

“If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.”

“People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.”