Trevor and his father Robert Noah
Trevor Noah visits his grandmother (11 min) (for Wednesday)
Racism: South Africa vs USA (start at 12:02)
Directions:
Part 1: Creating a listicle for chapter 8, Robert
Part 2: As a class (or independently), listen to Trevor Noah's reflection on race in South Africa as opposed to America. (start at 12:02) In approximately 200 words, what are your thoughts as to his ideas? What are their differences? Why are there these differences?
As always, share with dorothy.parker@rcsdk12.org
What is a Listicle?
Simply put, it’s an article made up of a list of items or ideas, also known as list posts.The most common form of listicle is a short list of 10-20 items that are based on a specific theme.
It’s been around for centuries.
Sei Shonagon, an 11th-century Japanese poet and lady-in-waiting, is believed to have penned the first listicle, which included gems like her list of “Rare things” such as “Two people living together who continue to be overawed by each other’s excellence.”
Why Do Listicles Work So Well?
YOUR TURN:
1. A title. Although the chapter title is Robert, after you have read the chapter return and write a thematic idea for the title of your listicle.
As you read, through the chapter, select ten points that sum up or support the development of your listicle theme. These do not necessarily need to be complete sentences.
FOREWARD (ROBERT)
When I was twenty-four years old, one day out of the blue my mother said to me, “You need
to find your father.”
“Why?” I asked. At that point I hadn’t seen him in over ten years and didn’t think I’d ever
see him again.
“Because he’s a piece of you,” she said, “and if you don’t find him you won’t find yourself.”
“I don’t need him for that,” I said. “I know who I am.”
“It’s not about knowing who you are. It’s about him knowing who you are, and you
knowing who he is. Too many men grow up without their fathers, so they spend their lives
with a false impression of who their father is and what a father should be. You need to find
your father. You need to show him what you’ve become. You need to finish that story.”
********************************************************************
ROBERT
My father is a complete mystery. There are so many questions about his life that I
still cannot even begin to answer.
Where’d he grow up? Somewhere in Switzerland.
Where’d he go to university? I don’t know if he did.
How’d he end up in South Africa? I haven’t a clue.
I’ve never met my Swiss grandparents. I don’t know their names or anything
about them. I do know my dad has an older sister, but I’ve never met her, either. I
know that he worked as a chef in Montreal and New York for a while before
moving to South Africa in the late 1970s. I know that he worked for an industrial
food-service company and that he opened a couple of bars and restaurants here
and there. That’s about it.
I never called my dad “Dad.” I never addressed him “Daddy” or “Father,”
either. I couldn’t. I was instructed not to. If we were out in public or anywhere
people might overhear us and I called him “Dad,” someone might have asked
questions or called the police. So for as long as I can remember I always called him
Robert.
While I know nothing of my dad’s life before me, thanks to my mom and just
from the time I have been able to spend with him, I do have a sense of who he is as
a person. He’s very Swiss, clean and particular and precise. He’s the only person I
know who checks into a hotel room and leaves it cleaner than when he arrived. He
doesn’t like anyone waiting on him. No servants, no housekeepers. He cleans up
after himself. He likes his space. He lives in his own world and does his own
everything.
I know that he never married. He used to say that most people marry because
they want to control another person, and he never wanted to be controlled. I know
that he loves traveling, loves entertaining, having people over. But at the same
time his privacy is everything to him. Wherever he lives he’s never listed in the
phone book. I’m sure my parents would have been caught in their time together if
he hadn’t been as private as he is. My mom was wild and impulsive. My father was
reserved and rational. She was fire, he was ice. They were opposites that attracted,
and I am a mix of them both.
One thing I do know about my dad is that he hates racism and homogeneity
more than anything, and not because of any feelings of self-righteousness or moral
superiority. He just never understood how white people could be racist in South
Africa. “Africa is full of black people,” he would say. “So why would you come all
the way to Africa if you hate black people? If you hate black people so much, why
did you move into their house?” To him it was insane.
Because racism never made sense to my father, he never subscribed to any of
the rules of apartheid. In the early eighties, before I was born, he opened one of
the first integrated restaurants in Johannesburg, a steakhouse. He applied for a
special license that allowed businesses to serve both black and white patrons.
These licenses existed because hotels and restaurants needed them to serve black
travelers and diplomats from other countries, who in theory weren’t subject to the
same restrictions as black South Africans; black South Africans with money in
turn exploited that loophole to frequent those hotels and restaurants.
My dad’s restaurant was an instant, booming success. Black people came
because there were few upscale establishments where they could eat, and they
wanted to come and sit in a nice restaurant and see what that was like. White
people came because they wanted to see what it was like to sit with black people.
The white people would sit and watch the black people eat, and the black people
would sit and eat and watch the white people watching them eat. The curiosity of
being together overwhelmed the animosity keeping people apart. The place had a
great vibe.
The restaurant closed only because a few people in the neighborhood took it
upon themselves to complain. They filed petitions, and the government started
looking for ways to shut my dad down. At first the inspectors came and tried to get
him on cleanliness and health-code violations. Clearly they had never heard of the
Swiss. That failed dismally. Then they decided to go after him by imposing
additional and arbitrary restrictions.
“Since you’ve got the license you can keep the restaurant open,” they said,
“but you’ll need to have separate toilets for every racial category. You’ll need white
toilets, black toilets, colored toilets, and Indian toilets.”
“But then it will be a whole restaurant of nothing but toilets.”
“Well, if you don’t want to do that, your other option is to make it a normal
restaurant and only serve whites.”
He closed the restaurant.
After apartheid fell, my father moved from Hillbrow to Yeoville, a formerly
quiet, residential neighborhood that had transformed into this vibrant melting pot
of black and white and every other hue. Immigrants were pouring in from Nigeria
and Ghana and all over the continent, bringing different food and exciting music.
Rockey Street was the main strip, and its sidewalks were filled with street vendors
and restaurants and bars. It was an explosion of culture.
My dad lived two blocks over from Rockey, on Yeo Street, right next to this
incredible park where I loved to go because kids of all races and different
countries were running around and playing there. My dad’s house was simple.
Nice, but nothing fancy. I feel like my dad had enough money to be comfortable
and travel, but he never spent lavishly on things. He’s extremely frugal, the kind of
guy who drives the same car for twenty years.
My father and I lived on a schedule. I visited him every Sunday afternoon.
Even though apartheid had ended, my mom had made her decision: She didn’t
want to get married. So we had our house, and he had his. I’d made a deal with my
mom that if I went with her to mixed church and white church in the morning,
after that I’d get to skip black church and go to my dad’s, where we’d watch
Formula 1 racing instead of casting out demons.
I celebrated my birthday with my dad every year, and we spent Christmas
with him as well. I loved Christmas with my dad because my dad celebrated
European Christmas. European Christmas was the best Christmas ever. My dad
went all out. He had Christmas lights and a Christmas tree. He had fake snow and
snow globes and stockings hung by the fireplace and lots of wrapped presents
from Santa Claus. African Christmas was a lot more practical. We’d go to church,
come home, have a nice meal with good meat and lots of custard and jelly. But
there was no tree. You’d get a present, but it was usually just clothes, a new outfit.
You might get a toy, but it wasn’t wrapped and it was never from Santa Claus. The
whole issue of Santa Claus is a rather contentious one when it comes to African
Christmas, a matter of pride. When an African dad buys his kid a present, the last
thing he’s going to do is give some fat white man credit for it. African Dad will tell
you straight up, “No, no, no. I bought you that.”
Outside of birthdays and special occasions, all we had were our Sunday
afternoons. He would cook for me. He’d ask me what I wanted, and I’d always
request the exact same meal, a German dish called Rösti, which is basically a
pancake made out of potatoes and some sort of meat with a gravy. I’d have that
and a bottle of Sprite, and for dessert a plastic container of custard with caramel
on top.
A good chunk of those afternoons would pass in silence. My dad didn’t talk
much. He was caring and devoted, attentive to detail, always a card on my
birthday, always my favorite food and toys when I came for a visit. But at the same
time he was a closed book. We’d talk about the food he was making, talk about the
F1 racing we’d watched. Every now and then he’d drop a tidbit of information,
about a place he’d visited or his steakhouse. But that was it. Being with my dad
was like watching a web series. I’d get a few minutes of information a few minutes
at a time, then I’d have to wait a week for the next installment.
—
When I was thirteen my dad moved to Cape Town, and we lost touch. We’d been
losing touch for a while, for a couple of reasons. I was a teenager. I had a whole
other world I was dealing with now. Videogames and computers meant more to
me than spending time with my parents. Also, my mom had married Abel. He was
incensed by the idea of my mom being in contact with her previous love, and she
decided it was safer for everyone involved not to test his anger. I went from seeing
my dad every Sunday to seeing him every other Sunday, maybe once a month,
whenever my mom could sneak me over, same as she’d done back in Hillbrow.
We’d gone from living under apartheid to living under another kind of tyranny,
that of an abusive, alcoholic man.
At the same time, Yeoville had started to suffer from white flight, neglect,
general decline. Most of my dad’s German friends had left for Cape Town. If he
wasn’t seeing me, he had no reason to stay, so he left. His leaving wasn’t anything
traumatic, because it never registered that we might lose touch and never see each
other again. In my mind it was just Dad’s moving to Cape Town for a bit.
Whatever.
Then he was gone. I stayed busy living my life, surviving high school,
surviving my early twenties, becoming a comedian. My career took off quickly. I
got a radio DJ gig and hosted a kids’ adventure reality show on television. I was
headlining at clubs all over the country. But even as my life was moving forward,
the questions about my dad were always there in the back of my mind, bubbling
up to the surface now and then. “I wonder where he is. Does he think about me?
Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud of me?” When a parent is absent,
you’re left in the lurch of not knowing, and it’s so easy to fill that space with
negative thoughts. “They don’t care.” “They’re selfish.” My one saving grace was
that my mom never spoke ill of him. She would always compliment him. “You’re
good with your money. You get that from your dad.” “You have your dad’s smile.”
“You’re clean and tidy like your father.” I never turned to bitterness, because she
made sure I knew his absence was because of circumstance and not a lack of love.
She always told me the story of her coming home from the hospital and my dad
saying, “Where’s my kid? I want that kid in my life.” She’d say to me, “Don’t ever
forget: He chose you.” And, ultimately, when I turned twenty-four, it was my mom
who made me track him down.
Because my father is so private, finding him was hard work. We didn’t have
an address. He wasn’t in the phone book. I started by reaching out to some of his
old connections, German expats in Johannesburg, a woman who used to date one
of his friends who knew somebody who knew the last place he stayed. I got
nowhere. Finally my mom suggested the Swiss embassy. “They have to know
where he is,” she said, “because he has to be in touch with them.”
I wrote to the Swiss embassy asking them where my father was, but because
my father is not on my birth certificate I had no proof that my father is my father.
The embassy wrote back and said they couldn’t give me any information, because
they didn’t know who I was. I tried calling them, and I got the runaround there as
well. “Look, kid,” they said. “We can’t help you. We’re the Swiss embassy. Do you
know nothing about the Swiss? Discretion is kind of our thing. That’s what we do.
Tough luck.” I kept pestering them and finally they said, “Okay, we’ll take your
letter and, if a man such as you’re describing exists, we might forward your letter
to him. If he doesn’t, maybe we won’t. Let’s see what happens.”
A few months later, a letter came back in the post: “Great to hear from you.
How are you? Love, Dad.” He gave me his address in Cape Town, in a
neighborhood called Camps Bay, and a few months later I went down to visit.
I’ll never forget that day. It was probably one of the weirdest days of my life,
going to meet a person I knew and yet did not know at all. My memories of him
felt just out of reach. I was trying to remember how he spoke, how he laughed,
what his manner was. I parked on his street and started looking for his address.
Camps Bay is full of older, semiretired white people, and as I walked down the
road all these old white men were walking toward me and past me. My father was
pushing seventy by that point, and I was so afraid I’d forgotten what he looked
like. I was looking in the face of every old white man who passed me, like, Are you
my daddy? Basically it looked like I was cruising old white dudes in a beachfront
retirement community. Then finally I got to the address I’d been given and rang
the bell, and the second he opened the door I recognized him. Hey! It’s you, I
thought. Of course it’s you. You’re the guy. I know you.
We picked up right where we’d left off, which was him treating me exactly the
way he’d treated me as a thirteen-year-old boy. Like the creature of habit he was,
my father went straight back into it. “Right! So where were we? Here, I’ve got all
your favorites. Potato Rösti. A bottle of Sprite. Custard with caramel.” Luckily my
tastes hadn’t matured much since the age of thirteen, so I tucked right in.
While I was eating he got up and went and picked up this book, an oversized
photo album, and brought it back to the table. “I’ve been following you,” he said,
and he 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 listings, from the beginning of my career all the way through to that
week. He was smiling so big as he took me through it, looking at the headlines.
“Trevor Noah Appearing This Saturday at the Blues Room.” “Trevor Noah Hosting
New TV Show.”
I felt a flood of emotions rushing through me. It was everything I could do not
to start crying. It felt like this ten-year gap in my life closed right up in an instant,
like only a day had passed since I’d last seen him. For years I’d had so many
questions. Is he thinking about me? Does he know what I’m doing? Is he proud of
me? But he’d been with me the whole time. He’d always been proud of me.
Circumstance had pulled us apart, but he was never not my father.
I walked out of his house that day an inch taller. Seeing him had reaffirmed
his choosing of me. He chose to have me in his life. He chose to answer my letter. I
was wanted. Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human
being.
Once we reconnected, I was overcome by this drive to make up for all the
years we’d missed. I decided the best way to do it was to interview him. I realized
very quickly that that was a mistake. Interviews will give you facts and
information, but facts and information weren’t really what I was after. What I
wanted was a relationship, and an interview is not a relationship. Relationships
are built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe them and
interact with them, and you come to know them—and that is what apartheid stole
from us: time. You can’t make up for that with an interview, but I had to figure
that out for myself.
I went down to spend a few days with my father, and I made it my mission:
This weekend I will get to know my father. As soon as I arrived I started peppering
him with questions. “Where are you from? Where did you go to school? Why did
you do this? How did you do that?” He started getting visibly irritated.
“What is this?” he said. “Why are you interrogating me? What’s going on
here?”
“I want to get to know you.”
“Is this how you normally get to know people, by interrogating them?”
“Well…not really.”
“So how do you get to know people?”
“I dunno. By spending time with them, I guess.”
“Okay. So spend time with me. See what you find out.”
So we spent the weekend together. We had dinner and talked about politics.
We watched F1 racing and talked about sports. We sat quietly in his backyard and
listened to old Elvis Presley records. The whole time he said not one word about
himself. Then, as I was packing up to leave, he walked over to me and sat down.
“So,” he said, “in the time we’ve spent together, what would you say you’ve
learned about your dad?”
“Nothing. All I know is that you’re extremely secretive.”
“You see? You’re getting to know me already
