Q&A: Author and Comedian Trevor Noah on Why He Wrote 'Born a Crime' | Audible

there were certain stories that I wanted to tell I knew I had stories you know from stage from Life uh you know from growing up in South Africa during aparts side growing up post aparts side in a world where I lived with parents uh father who was white and swiss a mother black and CA and I I wanted to tell a lot of the stories and on stage because of Comedy you are strangely enough limited within the confines of Comedy and that is the people need to laugh as much as possible many times I would tell friends and and acquaintances these stories and they go why don't you share this with with the world I was like but where where do you share it with the world and you know one day a good friend of mine said you should you should write a book and initially it was just an idea of writing a collection of stories it was it was just putting them together and seeing what came of it I said I'll write all the stories and I'll see where it takes me I went through different phases I thought is it a memoir I thought I'm too young for that I I thought would it be a uh random collection of essays but I came to realize in the end it essentially became uh almost like a a love letter to my mom you know I I grew up with her I spent most of my time um you know living with her we were teammates you know traveling through life together it was this journey of new uh constantly and so that's really what The Narrative of the book became it was our Coming of Age journey together for a mother and son I think very early on I realized that I I wanted to add an audiobook component because as a comedian and as a performer spoken word has always been my primary form of communication so if anything the audio book is more natural to me than the written book you know so that was a welcome addition to the process of writing my first book yeah oh I I I always wanted it to be me you know if like when I when I listen to an audio book I like to hear the voice of the author uh especially if it's someone that I may know who exists Beyond just the book it it's nice to have that face and that voice and the idea the most important thing for me was when I tell the stories I try and embody the characters the one thing that you get from the audio book that you can't get from the physical copy is the character you know I love I love performing I love doing voices I love embodying my family members my friends people I encountered so if anything I always wanted always would have intended to to read my own audio book because it is very literally my own words I would read in the booth and go man how would Morgan Freeman do this if he could make Penguins as human as he did if he could make me engage with them the way he did with that voice imagine and what he could do to my life story I I think that's my goal for my next Audi book is to is to try to get to the place where I'm I'm narrating it like Morgan Freeman I've worked in radio and I've worked on television and I've worked on stage and so each platform gives you a different set of tools to work with the thing I noticed when reading the book was because it's an intimate experience you're not performing it per se you know you are narrating it to a person you're telling it to somebody oneon-one but you're trying to engage the mind and that's what I love when I listen to an audio book is hearing the feeling of how that person is telling the story them putting me in the place that I cannot be in because I'm not seeing the words myself writing it the structure and making sure that your words and phrasing and grammar are correct is of utmost importance for the written word but then in terms of spoken you know you have more you have more parameters to play Within you have more spaces to exist within because the ear can can correct and play with what the eyes cannot you know so when telling a story because of feeling a pause when spoken is very different to a pause on a page a pause on a page has no measurement unlike music you cannot measure how many notes the silence is meant to be held for when you're narrating the PO is intentional and every single moment is accentuated because you can apply that you know inflection or or intention while you were narrating the book so that was definitely something that I enjoyed was I I got to experience different highs and lows uh when narrating as opposed to reading the book I think it was it was a lot more Vivid you know less cathartic for me and and and a lot more engrossing I felt like I was completely in the memory again I felt like I was living it again and I was telling it for the first time you know whereas when I was reading it I remembered it when I was narrating it I was being it I would like for people to listen to born of crime because it's a moment in time that I get to share with you oneon-one you know it's it's a it's a really intimate and special moment that can only be shared between a narrator and whoever is listening to the book and I would love for people to share that story with me come into my world live in South Africa for a bit grow up as a mixed raised child um learn what it's like to be an outsider in a world that is defined by only color and race you know uh it's it's it's really an invitation that's what it is I would like for people to come on that Journey with me because I feel uh and that's what I learned when when narrating the book and and even when when writing the book in the specificity of our stories we find the most common ground and that's what I would love for people to to to join me on I realized when when narrating the book when telling the stories again how limited my dreams actually were people often ask me they go did you have a dream of where you are now did you have a dream of what you've achieved and the answer is no my dream honestly was to live in a house that had a set of stairs because I used to see that on TV and that looked fantastic that you could have throw a tantrum with your parents and then run up the stairs that always looked fascinating to me um I always dreamed of having a house where I could look out onto something beautiful and dreamed of having a fridge that always had food in it you know those are the only things I Ever Wanted uh that was the limitation of of my life maybe a Ferrari was a thing because I could see it here and there I was like that's that's a dream that is something worth having but anything beyond that I was extremely limited by you know because your dreams are limited by your imagination you know if if you've been exposed to a certain amount of the world then that is really only where your dreams can take you if you're a child that does not know about space in any way you cannot dream of being an astronaut you know it's when you are exposed to all of these possibilities that your imagination can take you to the very limits of what you believe is possible through your dreams that's the greatest gift that my mother gave me and that was may not have been able to give me access to the entire world but she at least made me realize that the world existed

Channel: Audible

Views: 70,815

Keywords: Born a Crime, Trevor Noah, audible.com, Audible, biography, licensing, rights, audio book, memoir, audiobook, The Daily Show, autobiography, South Africa, memoir audiobooks, Apartheid audiobooks, south african history, comedy audiobooks, the daily show, the daily show with trevor noah

Id: CQYvBG5wTWU

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2017