Born a Crime

I've just started listening to Trevor Noah's Born a Crime on audio, which is read by him. It's a book that's been on my radar for a long time -- well, since the middle of last year when a very bright and capable Somali young man came into my classroom carrying it, ready to read it for independent reading.


Sidenote about moments like this. It is difficult to watch high school boys (and girls, but generally it's easier to connect girls with literature they like) try out books that are the right kind of story, the right tone, the right content, the right kind of author, for them, but they don't speak English well enough for the story to float. This is what happened with R. and Ta-Nahisi Coates' Between the World and Me and with A. and Born a Crime. They are 100% ready to read this content, but don't have the reading skills in English. Maybe they don't have the reading skills in their own language either - they simply haven't been reading long enough to be prepared for text at their emotional maturity level. Listening to Noah's anecdotes, there are not that many turns of phrase and difficult vocabulary words, but there are definitely enough to throw off a new reader.

I just finished the chapter where Noah describes how he grew up in a world of women. Women ran the household the town, his life, his school... and he came to respect their leadership and authority. He also says this was no accident - that young, black South Africans were systematically separated from their fathers, who left to work in factories or mines, and in service jobs for white South Africans.

By the end of the first chapter Noah had proven himself a talented storyteller. He combines the poignant with the humorous to great effect - we are drawn in by his story, and educated by his details about Apartheid South Africa.

He describes his mother in remarkable terms - a woman who persisted in pursuing the things she wanted, despite many arrests and the constant threat of violence and death. One of his earliest anecdotes (the word "anecdote" hardly seems to have the capacity to hold this story's significance) describes how she shoved him out of a moving renegade taxi whose driver had implied that he meant to kill her and her children. Noah was 9 years old, and he and his mother barrelled out of the moving minibus, along with a baby brother, protected by the mother's body, and ran like the dickens away from the drivers in hot pursuit.

This story reminded me of the stories of several of my students, which rarely featured fathers, but quite often featured mothers doing feats of remarkable bravery and resistance. I don't know what to make of it. How can I explain the seemingly superhuman courage and perseverance of mothers in desperate times? There must be research on this.

OK, I just found some. This Smithsonian Magazine article includes an interview with a researcher whose research has shown that mother rats are smarter in many ways than non-mother rats. Here's an excerpt which makes me think of Noah's story, and of the stories of my students, describing how their mothers faced daunting situations coolly and fearlessly.

Mothers are less stressed out when you put them in a stress-inducing situation. They don’t show as much fear. They are more efficient at foraging. They will find food, collect it quickly and get back. They are more aggressive at defending their offspring; if there is an intruder or any sort of threatening presence, moms will fight it more than non-mothers. A recent study showed that moms are better at recognizing emotions than others. Mothers are able to recognize hostility, disgust, fear or the types of emotions that would trigger some sort of danger to their offspring.

This paragraph also helps to explain the attitude of Sharon Rivers, mother of Tish rivers and advocate for Fonny Hunt, in If Beale Street Could Talk. This week we have looked at the scene in which Sharon goes to Puerto Rico to trace the woman who has accused Fonny of rape. Sharon needs to find her, befriend her, and convince her to return to New York and change her testimony in court. A monumental task.

Sharon, arriving in Puerto Rico.

But Sharon takes it on with grace and self-possession. How do women do this? Would a man take on that task? I feel most would not. I think part of a woman's genius is that she is not afraid of what failure will do to her image, or self-image. A certain familiarity with humiliation emboldens her to act despite the possibility of failure.

One of my main goals as a teacher is to reduce the perceived risk of failure in the classroom. Today a student tried to express a complicated idea in class, and had to backtrack several times to correct what she was saying. Two other students gave sighs and sounds of exasperation as she paused and restarted for the third time. I spoke to them about how having to pause and consider what you're saying is not a sign of failure, it's a sign that what you're piecing together is worth expressing, because it's complicated. I always wonder at the efficacy of such statements. Can kids process that? Could I have, at 17? Probably. But I could understand every word a teacher was saying.

This particular student, by the way, has a very impressive mother, and is herself on her way to fearless, inspiring womanhood. I am so lucky to get to spend my days with these students.