![]() ![]() ![]() He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.īorn and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. As an accomplished adult humorist looking back to his childhood self, the attempt to inject a humorous tone into these grim proceedings frequently hits an awkward note.Ī somewhat disjointed narrative with flashes of brilliant storytelling and acute observations on South African culture.Įlie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. I was nearly six when Mandela was released, ten before democracy finally came, yet she was preparing me to live a life of freedom long before we knew freedom would exist.” On the whole, though studded with insight and provocative social criticism, Noah’s material doesn’t feel fully digested. “There was no reason to think it would end it had seen generations come and go. “Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that my mother started her little project, me, at a time when she could not have known that apartheid would end,” writes the author. Throughout, the author documents the evolving yet continually challenging race relations among blacks, whites, and “coloreds.” Noah was born the son of a white Swiss-German father and a devoutly Christian black Xhosa mother who purposely chose to have a child through a mixed relationship, with full understanding of the legal ramifications established under the Immorality Act of 1927, which banned illicit carnal relations between a native woman and a European male. Noah’s mother proved to be the dominant, remarkable force throughout his life, constantly striving to instill deep values of education, religion, and freedom as she struggled with her own desire for independence. His story unfolds through a series of loosely assembled essays that touch on his home life and school environment and later expand outward to various cities and neighborhoods and his encounters with petty crime and confrontations with domestic violence. In a gritty memoir, Noah relates his harsh experiences growing up during the final years of apartheid and the chaotic and racially charged conflicts that would continue to undermine the newly won freedom that was established in its aftermath. The host of The Daily Show reflects on his tumultuous South African childhood. ![]()
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