Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor 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. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Nelson Mandela once said, "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, "I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being." (Noah)
Ms. D highly recommends this book. Give it a try. It's written in short chapters, but each chapter tells a piece of his story. Mr. Noah has been through some crazy things... like his mom throwing him out of a moving car.
In If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, Tim O'Brien writes about his life as a U.S. combat soldier in Vietnam. The book shows how awful and mistaken the war was; how much suffering it caused the Vietnamese people, and how damaging it was for U.S. soldiers.
