Trevor Noah's Lesson To Young Readers: It's Freeing To Define Yourself On Your Own Terms
Trevor Noah thinks we should all be young readers.
The comedian and “Daily Show” host’s new book “It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood” — a young adult adaptation of his 2016 autobiography — isn’t watered down for younger bookworms.
Noah says besides tweaking some of the language and simplifying some of the stories told in the original, his memoir for young adults is largely the same.
“All I changed in the book was just how I described certain concepts, but I didn’t try to talk down to younger readers because I didn’t like being talked down to when I was young,” he tells Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson.
Noah’s young adult book aims to provide American kids with an intimate view of what it was like growing up in apartheid South Africa — and to present a deeply personal perspective of how racism shaped the way he saw himself.
He says he hopes American kids reading the book will understand that racism is “an all-too-common idea or a common theme that happens all around the world.”
“I think sometimes it’s nice to have perspective on these issues, just so that you understand that it’s not a unique problem that one country deals with, but rather an idea that society as a whole deals with across borders,” Noah says.
His childhood during and after apartheid South Africa shows how as a kid, Noah was grappling with coming to terms with who he was and who he wanted to become. Born to a black South African mother and a white European father, Noah says he felt defined by the government — “it was interesting being in a country where the law defined me as one race” — and by how others labeled him.
Noah says his book serves as a lesson to young readers: There’s liberation in defining who you are on your
