Noah’s stormy ride

Moving account of comedian’s journey, relationship with father and mother

COMEDIAN Trevor Noah has once again recounted the difficulties of growing up as a child of a mixed-race relationship‚ saying that his father’s name is not even on his birth certificate.

In an extract from his book‚ Born a Crime and Other Stories‚ published this week he opens up about his relationship with his father.

He says his mother asked his father (a German/ Swiss expat) to help her have a child and how‚ when Trevor was born‚ she had to lie that his father was from Swaziland.

“My father isn’t on my birth certificate. Officially‚ he’s never been my father‚” Noah wrote in the extract‚ published in Drum.

He also remembered how the family would sometimes attempt to visit the park‚ but had to hide the fact that they were together because of the strict apartheid laws of the time.

“My mother tells me that once‚ when I was a toddler‚ my dad tried to go with us.

“We were in the park‚ he was walking a good bit away from us‚ and I ran after him‚ screaming‚ ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’ People started looking. He panicked and ran away. I thought it was a game and kept chasing him‚” Noah wrote.

He said he would spend Sunday afternoons watching Formula One racing with his father‚ but that eventually stopped and his father moved to Cape Town.

After a lengthy and difficult search‚ Noah eventually tracked his father down.

He told Late Night With Seth Meyers this year that his father had never watched him perform live.

But in his book he said that he discovered during their reunion that his father had been following his career all along.

“While I was eating he went to pick up this book‚ an over-sized photo album‚ and he brought it back to the table. ‘I’ve been following you‚’ he said‚ and opened it up.

“It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done‚ every time my name was mentioned in a newspaper‚ everything from magazine covers to the tiniest club listing.

“He smiled broadly as he took me through it‚ looking at the headlines. It was everything I could do not to start crying.

“It felt like this 10-year gap in my life closed right up in an instant‚” he wrote.

The book details Noah’s path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show in New York.

It tells of his birth being a criminal act given that he was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison.

In the form of 18 personal essays, it relates the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world in which he was never supposed to exist.

It is also the story of his relationship with his fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother – his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

According to a review from Mail&Guardian: “Born a Crime is not about Trevor Noah of The Daily Show in the US fame. The show is not even mentioned.

“Instead, this is a moving, intimate story of growing up in South Africa from 1984. It stands as an archetypal riteof-passage and coming-tomaturity tale, with unflinching and vivid accounts of home and school life in township and city, domestic violence, enterprising young men in Alex scrabbling to make the barest of livings, and the optimism, endurance and faith of Nombuyiselo (‘she who gives back’) Noah.” — Tishalive, additional reporting DDR