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Noah, Trevor

June 20, 2017 by admin

WORK TITLE: Born a Crime
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 2/20/1984
WEBSITE: http://www.trevornoah.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: South African

 

RESEARCHER NOTES:

 

LC control no.:    no2014011699

Descriptive conventions:
                   rda

Personal name heading:
                   Noah, Trevor, 1984- 

Birth date:        1984

Found in:          Trevor Noah, 2013: title frames (Trevor Noah)
                   Wikipedia, Jan. 28, 2014 (Trevor Noah, South African
                      comedian, born 1984 in South Africa)
                   Born a crime, 2016: ECIP t.p. (Trevor Noah) data view (b.
                      2/20/1984 in Johannesburg; S. African comedian and
                      television actor; as of Sept. 2015 is  the host of
                      American late-night comedy/commentary television
                      program, The Daily Show, replacing John Stewart)

================================================================================


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PERSONAL

Born February 20, 1984, in Johannesburg, South Africa; son of Robert and Nombuyiselo Patricia Noah.

ADDRESS

CAREER

Actor, 2002–; stand-up comedian, 2006–; The Daily Show, contributor, 2014-15, host, 2015–; Has appeared in television series and comedy shows, including Tonight with Trevor Noah, 2010-12; The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 2012; Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, 2013; Trevor Noah: African American, 2013; Red Nose Day, 2015; and Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation, 2015. Has appeared in films, including You Laugh But It’s True, 2011; Taka Takata, 2011; and Mad Buddies, 2012.

AWARDS:

South African Comics’ Choice Award Comic of the Year, 2012; Personality of the Year, 2015; NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work, and Zora Neale Hurston Award, both 2017, both for Born a Crime; Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award for Favourite African Star, 2017; MTV Movie & TV Awards for Best Host, and GLAAD Media Award, both 2017, both for The Daily Show.

WRITINGS

  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (memoir), Spiegel & Grau (New York, NY), 2016

SIDELIGHTS

Best known as the host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah offers an outsider’s perspective on American politics and culture; born and raised in South Africa, Noah worked as a standup comedian before moving to the United States in 2011 to further pursue his career. While Noah’s anti-partisan perspective drives his approach to The Daily Show, that perspective originates in his unique childhood. As he explains in his memoir, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Noah was the child of a black mother and white father during apartheid, when segregation was so severe that interracial coupling was not only taboo, but also highly illegal. Noah was literally born a crime, and this shaped his entire childhood to the point where he was rarely allowed to go out in public.

As Noah told Fresh Air correspondent Terry Gross, “I was really sheltered. My grandmother kept me locked in the house when I was staying, you know, with the family and so-and-so. And every household, for instance, had to have a registry of everyone who lived in that house. And so the police would check in on you randomly, and they would come into the house, and they would look through that registry and look at all the names of all the people who were registered to be living in the house. And they would, you know, cross-reference that with the actual inhabitants of the dwelling.” Noah added: “And I was never on that piece of paper. I was always hidden. My grandmother would hide me somewhere if the police did show up. And it was a constant game of hide and seek. But I didn’t know why anything was happening. You’re a child. If you’re told to go to the bedroom, and, you know, go under the bed, then you go under the bed. But you don’t—I never saw it as a fearful moment. I never saw it as something that was governing my life because I was so young that I didn’t ask questions.”

As Noah recounts in his memoir, his mother was occasionally arrested and fined when she was found with her husband, but since authorities did not know the couple was married, or that Noah existed, she escaped harsher punishments. Eventually, Noah reports in his memoir, his distant father eventually left the family, returned to his native Switzerland, and left Noah and his mother to fend for themselves. From there, Noah’s memoir recalls deep poverty and social ostracism. He writes of his mother’s second marriage to an abusive alcoholic, and he also writes of his mother’s deeply religious beliefs. Yet, despite her faith, she encouraged Noah to question everything. Noah additionally discusses how he navigated his rare mixed-race status, and he also shares his harrowing confrontation with his abusive stepfather.

Praising Born a Crime in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani remarked: “By turns alarming, sad and funny, his book provides a harrowing look, through the prism of Mr. Noah’s family, at life in South Africa under apartheid and the country’s lurching entry into a postapartheid era in the 1990s. Some stories will be familiar to fans who have followed the author’s stand-up act. But his accounts here are less the polished anecdotes of a comedian underscoring the absurdities of life under apartheid, than raw, deeply personal reminiscences about being ‘half-white, half-black’ in a country where his birth ‘violated any number of laws, statutes and regulations.'” According to a Publishers Weekly critic, “Noah is quick with a disarming joke, and he skillfully integrates . . . parallel narratives via interstitial asides between chapters.” Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, was also impressed, and she found that Noah’s “candid and compassionate essays deepen our perception of the complexities of race, gender, and class.”

In the words of BookPage correspondent Priscilla Kipp, Born a Crime is “not a rags-to-riches story; the memoir ends before Noah finds success. Instead, the book reveals the hard details of a grim life.” Indeed, LaVonne Neff in Christian Century stated that Noah “doesn’t mention his adult achievements in Born a Crime,” though “his humor is mostly self-deprecating—’I was the acne-ridden clown with duck feet in floppy shoes,’ he writes—and his stories end before his career begins. Rather than a rags-to-riches success story, the book is a memoir about survival against the heavy odds of racism, poverty, hunger, and abuse.” Praising the memoir in Vulture, Elise Czajkowski announced: “The book is clearly written with an American audience in mind, at times explaining the history of South Africa and apartheid and comparing it to the U.S.’s own history of oppression and race relations. Even longtime fans are likely to learn new tidbits about Noah in this memoir.” Another positive assessment was proffered by Gene Seymour in USA Today, and he announced: “What makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism from darker-skinned children in his township, making his outsider status work for him among the jocks, nerds and party people.”

Noah discussed his outsider status in an earlier Fresh Air interview with Gross, noting that his career as a comedian began as “just stories.” Noah observed: “I relayed stories of my life, things that I was going through – observational comedy, anecdotal stuff. And then I spent a lot of time talking about what was happening in society, you know, because I’ve always been in the middle. So I’ve always felt one thing I suffer from and I also feel is my gift is the ability to see the other side. I, you know, I grew up in a world where people were very, very, very angry and hated a lot of white people, if not all white people. And I would have to speak up to my friends and say, hey, I know white people that are really cool, you know? My dad is one of them.”

BIOCRIT
BOOKS

  • Noah, Trevor, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Spiegel & Grau (New York, NY), 2017.

PERIODICALS

  • Booklist, October 1, 2016, Donna Seaman, review of Born a Crime.

  • BookPage, December, 2016. Priscilla Kipp, review of Born a Crime.

  • Christian Century, May 10, 2o17, LaVonne Neff, review of Born a Crime.

  • Fresh Air, February 18, 2016, Terry Gross, “Under Apartheid, Trevor Noah’s Mom Taught Him to Face Injustice with Humor”; November 22, 2016, Terry Gross, “Trevor Noah Says He Grew Up ‘In The Shadow Of A Giant’ (His Mom).”

  • Morning Edition, November 11, 2016, “‘Daily Show’ Host Writes about Growing Up Biracial in South Africa.”

  • New York Times, November 29, 2016, Michiko Kakutani, “A Biracial Boyhood Under Apartheid.”

  • Publishers Weekly, October 31, 2016, Dave Stern, author interview; October 31, 2016, review of Born a Crime.

  • USA Today, November 15, 2016, Gene Seymour, “Trevor Noah Casts Revealing Light on Apartheid.

  • UWIRE Text, June 20, 2017, Sabina Dirienzo, review of Born a Crime.

  • Vulture, November 18, 2016, Elise Czajkowski, review of Born a Crime.

  • Washington Post, November 10, 2016, Karen Heller, review of Born a Crime.

ONLINE

  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Online, http://www.post-gazette.com/ (August 4, 2017), review of Born a Crime.

  • Trevor Noah Website, http://www.trevornoah.com (August 4, 2017).*

  • Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood ( memoir) Spiegel & Grau (New York, NY), 2016
1. Born a crime : stories from a South African childhood LCCN 2016031399 Type of material Book Personal name Noah, Trevor, 1984- author. Main title Born a crime : stories from a South African childhood / Trevor Noah. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2016. Description x, 288 pages ; 25 cm ISBN 9780399588174 (hardcover) 9780399590443 (international) CALL NUMBER PN2287.N557 A3 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE
  • gale bios - http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/person1/actionWin?scanId=&query=&prodId=BIC1&showDisambiguation=true&p=BIC1&mode=view&catId=GALE%7CMMMRPU891071956&u=schlager&limiter=&contentModules=&displayGroups=&display-query=&action=e&windowstate=normal&resetBreadCrumb=

    Trevor Noah
    Who's Who Among African Americans, April 7, 2017
    Content Level = Intermediate
    Listen

    Born: February 20, 1984 in South Africa
    Nationality: South African
    Occupation: Comedian

    Actor, 2002-; stand-up comedian, 2006-. TV series: "Isidingo", 2002; "Tonight with Trevor Noah", 2010-12; "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", 2012; "Funny Business", 2013; "Comedy Up Late", 2013; "Late Show with David Letterman", 2013; "Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell", 2013; "Trevor Noah: African American", 2013; "QI", 2013; "The Royal Variety Performance 2014", 2014; "The Daily Show", contributor, 2014-15, host, 2015-; "Trevor Noah: Nationwild Comedy Tour", 2015; "Red Nose Day", 2015; "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: Single Shot", 2015; "Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation", 2015. Films: "Trevor Noah: The Daywalker", 2009; "Trevor Noah: The Daywalker Revisited", 2010; "Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal", 2011; "You Laugh But It's True", 2011; "Taka Takata", 2011; "WROARF Public Service Announcement", 2011; "Mad Buddies", 2012; "Trevor Noah: That's Racist", 2012; "Trevor Noah: It's My Culture", 2013. Stage: "The Racist", Edinburgh Fringe, 2012.

    Achievements:

    Toured the world as a stand-up comedian; hosted numerous music, television, and film awards in South Africa; South African Comedy Festival, host; first South African stand-up comedian to appear on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" and "The Late Show with David Letterman".

    Family: son of Robert Noah and Patricia Noah.
    Source Citation
    "Trevor Noah." Who's Who Among African Americans, Gale, 2017. Biography in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1645547640/BIC1?u=schlager&xid=27202a78. Accessed 10 July 2017.
    Gale Document Number: GALE|K1645547640

    Trevor Noah
    Gale Biography in Context, December 1, 2014
    Content Level = Basic
    Listen

    Born: February 20, 1984 in South Africa
    Nationality: South African
    Occupation: Comedian

    South African Savanna Comics' Choice Award for Comic of the Year, 2012.

    Trevor Noah is a South African comedian and actor. He has hosted several television and radio shows and starred in his own stand-up comedy specials throughout his career. In March of 2015, Noah was chosen as comedian Jon Stewart's replacement to host Comedy Central's The Daily Show. Noah was scheduled to take over hosting duties in August of 2015.

    Early Life

    Trevor Noah was born on February 20, 1984, in South Africa. His mother, Nombuyiselo Noah, was a black South African, and his father was a white native of Switzerland. Because interracial relationships were a crime in South Africa at this time due to apartheid, Noah's relationship to his father was kept a secret for most of his life. Eventually his mother was jailed and issued a fine for being married to a white man. His father then returned to Switzerland without the family, and Noah's mother raised him.

    Noah lost touch with his father for many years because of apartheid. His mother married another man, Ngisaveni Shingange, who was abusive to her. After many years of living in fear, Nombuyiselo Noah filed for divorce in 2009. Afterward her husband tracked her down and shot her in the back and face. Nombuyiselo Noah eventually recovered. When Noah confronted Shingange about the matter, his stepfather allegedly threatened to kill him. In 2012 Shingange pled guilty to the attempted murder of Nombuyiselo Noah and was sentenced to three years of "correctional supervision." He was not charged for the alleged threats against Trevor Noah.

    Career as Television Host and Comedian

    Despite his family issues, Noah became involved in South Africa's acting and comedy scene as a young man. When he was 18, he landed one of his first acting roles on the South African soap opera Isidingo. He then hosted radio shows and award and reality shows on television. Noah decided to focus his career on comedy in 2007. Two years later, he landed his own stand-up special, Trevor Noah: The Daywalker. Over the next four years, he appeared in four more specials, including Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal (2011), Trevor Noah: That's Racist (2012), Trevor Noah: It's My Culture (2013), and Trevor Noah: African American (2013). He also chronicled the events leading up to his comedy debut in the documentary You Laugh But It's True (2011). Noah's comedy routine often centered on his distraught childhood and politically charged topics such as race. He told CNN that he rarely wrote down ideas. He said, "I like to forge the story in my head. Most of my show is true, like 90% of everything I say on stage is true, I just have to find the way to make it funny, that's the difficult thing."

    In 2012 Noah became acquainted with American television audiences when he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was the first South African comedian to perform on the show. He then appeared on a series of talk shows and comedy specials, gaining further recognition in the United States. Next he appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and in Live at the Apollo at the Apollo Theater in New York. Noah joined the team of correspondents on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, appearing in three episodes in late 2014 and early 2015. In March of 2015, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart announced he was leaving the show and named Noah as his successor. Noah was set to take over in August of that year. While awaiting his turn as host, Noah embarked on a comedy tour across the United States.
    Further Readings

    Online

    "Comedy Central Stands Behind Trevor Noah, New 'Daily Show' Host, Amid Scrutiny," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/arts/television/trevor-noah-new-daily-show-host-comes-under-scrutiny-for-tweets.html (April 18, 2015).
    "New 'Daily Show' Host Tweeted a 'Fat-Chick Joke' at Age 27!," Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/31/new-daily-show-host-tweeted-a-fat-chick-joke-at-age-27/ (April 18, 2015).
    "Noah Voted King of Comedy," Times Live (South Africa), http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2012/07/11/noah-voted-king-of-comedy (April 18, 2015).
    "Threats or No-ah Threats, the Tour Is On," City Press (South Africa), http://www.citypress.co.za/entertainment/threats-or-no-ah-threats-the-tour-is-on-20120804/ (April 18, 2015).
    "Trevor Noah," IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3696388/ (April 18, 2015).
    "Trevor Noah's Hell at Home," City Press (South Africa), http://www.citypress.co.za/entertainment/trevor-noahs-hell-at-home-20120303/ (April 18, 2015).
    "Trevor Noah to Succeed Jon Stewart on 'The Daily Show,'" New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/arts/television/trevor-noah-to-succeed-jon-stewart-on-the-daily-show.html?_r=0 (April 18, 2015).
    "25 Things You Need to Know about Trevor Noah, New 'Daily Show' Host," Daily News (New York), http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/25-trevor-noah-article-1.2167117 (April 18, 2015).
    "Who Is Trevor Noah? 'Daily Show' Fans Will Soon Find Out," CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/30/entertainment/trevor-noah-feat/ (April 18, 2015).
    "Why Mixed-Race Comic Was 'Born a Crime,'" CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/13/showbiz/trevor-noah-comedy/index.html (April 18, 2015).

    Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2017 Gale, Cengage Learning.
    Source Citation
    "Trevor Noah." Gale Biography in Context, Gale, 2014. Biography in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1650009644/BIC1?u=schlager&xid=fc346a83. Accessed 10 July 2017.
    Gale Document Number: GALE|K1650009644

    Trevor Noah
    Contemporary Black Biography, December 11, 2015
    Content Level = Intermediate
    Listen

    Born: February 20, 1984 in South Africa
    Nationality: South African
    Occupation: Comedian

    Television actor and host, 2002--; stand-up comedian, 2007--; host of The Daily Show, Comedy Central, 2015--.

    Comic of the Year, South African Savanna Comics' Choice Awards, 2012

    Born on February 20, 1984, in Johannesburg, South Africa; son of Nombuyiselo Noah. Addresses: Agent--Levity Entertainment Group, 6701 Center Dr. West, 11th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90045. Web--http://www.trevornoah.com. Twitter--@Trevornoah.

    On March 30, 2015, the Comedy Central network revealed the name of the next host of The Daily Show, its flagship program. Jon Stewart, who had transformed the faux news broadcast into a satirical staple in the media diet of political liberals, was stepping aside after 16 years in the anchor's chair. His surprise replacement was a name virtually unfamiliar to most U.S. viewers, Trevor Noah. The 31-year-old comedian, scheduled to take over as host of The Daily Show in the fall of 2015, had risen to fame in his native South Africa by incisively extracting humor from the country's tense political culture and fearlessly addressing the complexities of race, including his own mixed race--or, in South African parlance, "colored"--background.

    Noah was born in Johannesburg on February 20, 1984. As he put it in his stand-up routine, he was "born a crime," the product of an interracial marriage banned under apartheid laws. When he walked on the streets of his home township of Soweto with his mother, Nombuyiselo Noah, she insisted that the pair keep their distance if they saw a police officer--making him feel, he later joked, "like a bag of weed." If his father, a white man of Swiss and German heritage, was with him, they would walk on opposite sides of the street. Noah shuttled between his mother's home in Soweto and his father's apartment in Johannesburg, where his mother could only enter by pretending that she was the housekeeper. Finally, the authorities found out and arrested Nombuyiselo Noah on charges of immorality. After her release from prison, she raised Noah without his father, who returned to Europe.

    Other fabrications were necessary to account for Noah's light complexion to his neighbors in Soweto. He told them that he was an albino--but not to worry, he was the sort of albino who could be outdoors without getting sunburned. His friends called him "the daywalker." Later, he would take that nickname as the title of his first one-man show. These early experiences as a social outsider became the fundamental material of Noah's comedy in the postapartheid era. A self-described "cultural chameleon," he developed the ability to view the nation's racial divides and related social conflicts from multiple perspectives, critiquing the assumptions of all parties. Supplementing his shrewd skills of observation were his uncanny ability to do impersonations and his knack for learning languages--he speaks seven of them.

    Noah recognized a yen for performing during his teenage years. In 2002 he began playing a recurring role in Isidingo, a television soap opera. He became a radio host for a youth-oriented Johannesburg station, calling his program Noah's Ark. For several years he was a roving television host, serving as emcee on educational, sports, and reality television programs that aired on the state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). He also appeared as a contestant on an SABC dance competition series in 2008. Only after he had acquired a few years of experience in the entertainment industry, around 2007, did Noah begin to think of himself as a comic. Stand-up comedy was practically unheard of among South African blacks. For example, Noah had seen Eddie Murphy in movies, but he never imagined that would break into show business doing stand-up.

    It was a bold move for Noah to begin performing routines in Johannesburg's comedy clubs, not just because of his race but also because he wanted to talk about race. From the start, his routines focused on the thorniest issues in South African politics and the news, but his approach and demeanor were light, upbeat, and decidedly nonideological. He joked about President Jacob Zuma and his multiple wives and mistresses. He poked fun at the 91-year-old Nelson Mandela. He joked about the Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius and his murder trial. He worked with great diligence to hone his act, taking any opportunity to practice in front of an audience. His admirers and fellow comics credit him with helping South Africans of all races learn to laugh together and at themselves. "We have a lot of stories to share," Noah said in a 2015 interview with CNN's Jessica Ellis and Teo Kermeliotis. "We have a lot to learn about each other because we were separated for so long, so now we're trying to understand who we are and who everyone around us is as well."

    Noah toured South Africa as an opening act for the Canadian comedy star Russell Peters. In 2009 he performed his first full show as a headliner, The Daywalker, which was also released on DVD. (David Paul Meyer's 2011 documentary film about Noah, You Laugh but It's True, recounts the days leading up to the Johannesburg debut of The Daywalker.) His success as a comedian only enhanced his stature as an emcee. In 2009 Noah hosted both the South African Film and Television Awards and the South African Music Awards. He premiered the television talk show Tonight with Trevor Noah on the M-Net channel in August of 2010. Around that time, the South African telecommunication provider Cell C unveiled a marketing campaign that featured Noah, who had previously derided the company's service in his routines. The company published an open letter apologizing to him, and he subsequently appeared in ads as Cell C's "customer experience officer"--another sort of CEO.

    Noah toured in the United States in 2011 and eventually settled in Los Angeles. He was living there in July of 2012 when he was named Comic of the Year at the South African Savanna Comics' Choice Awards. Six months earlier, in January, he had given a stellar performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the first South African comic ever to appear on the legendary program during its half-century on the air. However, Noah wanted it understood that he did not see himself as a South African comic, but merely as a comic who happens to be from South Africa. Part of his motivation for moving to North America was to prove that his appeal was not limited to his home environment. In 2012 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world's largest arts festival, he was introduced by the popular British comedian Eddie Izzard before wowing crowds with his one-man show The Racist, which was later developed into the television special Trevor Noah: That's Racist.

    In December of 2014 Noah became an on-air correspondent for The Daily Show. He had appeared in only three segments when he was tapped to succeed Stewart as host. Television critics that said the African transplant would bring a fresh and worldly perspective to the Comedy Central franchise, but some wondered whether Noah would be able to replicate Stewart's astute understanding of U.S. political culture. It seemed clear that Noah's cool, unflappable bearing would provide a sharp contrast to the edgy, excitable persona of his predecessor. Stewart himself strongly endorsed Noah, intimating that he would stay on as a producer and occasional contributor. South Africans reacted to the announcement of Noah's big break with a burst of pride. Loyiso Gola, another South African comic, told Stephanie Findlay in the Toronto Star, "Trevor Noah hosting The Daily Show is like the moon landing. South African standup comedy has changed forever."

    Selected works

    Films
    Trevor Noah: The Daywalker, Mannequin Pictures, 2009.
    Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal, Day 1 Films, 2011.
    You Laugh but It's True, Day 1 Films, 2011.
    Trevor Noah: That's Racist, Day 1 Films, 2012.
    Trevor Noah: It's My Culture, Day 1 Films, 2013.

    Television
    Trevor Noah: African American, Showtime, 2013.

    Further Readings

    Sources
    Periodicals

    Daily Maverick, August 6, 2010.
    Newsweek, June 18, 2012.
    New York Daily News, March 30, 2015.
    New York Times, March 31 2015; April 2, 2015.
    Times Live (South Africa), July 11, 2012.
    Toronto Star, March 31, 2015.

    Online

    Ellis, Jessica, and Teo Kermeliotis, "Why Mixed-Race Comic Was 'Born a Crime,'" CNN.com, March 30, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/13/showbiz/trevor-noah-comedy (accessed June 11, 2015).
    "Translating South African Jokes for a U.S. Audience," National Public Radio, July 5, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/07/03/156212890/translating-south-african-jokes-for-a-u-s-audience (accessed June 11, 2015).

    Source Citation
    "Trevor Noah." Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 128, Gale, 2015. Biography in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1606007344/BIC1?u=schlager&xid=0d9e61b3. Accessed 10 July 2017.
    Gale Document Number: GALE|K1606007344

    Trevor Noah
    Newsmakers, March 4, 2016
    Content Level = Intermediate
    Listen

    Born: February 20, 1984 in South Africa
    Nationality: South African
    Occupation: Comedian

    Comedian and television host. Began acting at age 18 on the South African soap Isidingo, 2002; became stand-up comedian, 2007. Stand-up specials include: Trevor Noah: The Daywalker, 2009; Tonight with Trevor Noah, 2010-11; Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal, 2011; Trevor Noah: That's Racist, 2012; Trevor Noah: African American, 2013; Trevor Noah: It's My Culture, 2013; Trevor Noah: Nationwild Comedy Tour, 2015; Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation, 2015. Television appearances include: The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 2012; The Daily Show, Comedy Central, contributor, 2014-15, host, executive producer, and writer, 2015--.

    South African Savanna Comics' Choice Award, Comic of the Year Award, 2012; Sydney Comedy Festival Awards, Breakout Artist Award, 2013; MTV Africa Music Awards, Personality of the Year Award, 2015.

    Born February 20, 1984, in Johannesburg, South Africa; son of Robert and Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. Addresses: Home--New York, NY. Management--Chambers Management, 39-41 Parker St., London, WC2B 5PQ, UK. Office--Comedy Central, 345 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

    South African comedian Trevor Noah made his first appearance on Comedy Central's satiric news program The Daily Show in late 2014 and only appeared as a so-called senior international correspondent three times over the next four months. So it was a surprise to many observers when the young comic was tapped to replace long-time host Jon Stewart in March of 2015. Noah knew he had a difficult task ahead of him. According to John Doyle in the Toronto Globe & Mail, Noah stated: "I hope in time to have that same impact. I don't think I've earned that yet. I have to work very hard to achieve that. My job at first is to be extremely funny."

    Noah was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on February 20, 1984, and his very birth was a crime, he would later note in his stand-up act. His black mother, Patricia, was a member of the Xhosa tribe, and his white father, Robert, was a Swiss national. Interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa under apartheid, so "she was arrested many times for daring to be with him," Noah told Roz Laws of the Birmingham Post, adding, "I think it was less to do with the strength of their relationship and more about her not wanting someone to dictate to her. She's a big part of who I am as a person and as a comedian." Noah spent his early years in the home of his mother and grandmother in Soweto, a segregated area of the city. On weekends, his mother had to pose as a maid when they visited his father's all-white neighborhood, and the family had to walk on opposite sides of the street when they went out together. Sometimes his mother had to walk apart from young Trevor because his skin was so much lighter than hers, a fact that also made it hard for him to feel accepted in all-black Soweto.

    Apartheid ended in 1994, when black South Africans finally earned the vote and helped elect as president former political prisoner Nelson Mandela. Soon Noah's family moved to a comfortable suburban home. "I was 12 years old," the comic told Nathan Heller in Vogue, "and this was the first time I wasn't sleeping in a room with five of my cousins and peeing into a bucket at night." After graduating from a private high school in Johannesburg, Noah turned to acting, getting a small part on the South African soap opera Isidingo. He then moved into radio when someone overheard him being funny on a bus. His radio gig led to jobs hosting television shows, including the country's television, film, and music awards. He emceed reality shows and finished second on a celebrity dance program. He also had his own late-night talk show on South African television for two seasons, Tonight with Trevor Noah.

    Encouraged by friends who were continually entertained by his jokes, Noah attempted stand-up comedy. When he went onstage, "I didn't know what I was going to say, or how to say it," he told Heller. "I knew nothing about structure, punch lines, pull-backs--none of the mechanics. All I knew is, as soon as I started talking I was home." By 2007 Noah was focusing his career on comedy. Inspired by American comics such as Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock, Noah created routines that recounted funny details of his unusual childhood or made wry observations about modern life. His stand-up also showcased his ear for impersonations and accents, honed while growing up in Soweto, where several African languages were spoken. (Noah himself speaks six languages fluently, including his mother's native Xhosa.) He filmed several specials, beginning with Trevor Noah: The Daywalker, and sales of his DVDs soon outstripped those of any other comedian in Africa.

    Found International Recognition

    Amid his growing success, Noah was served with reminders that life could be dangerous. During a brief stint as a taxi driver in his early twenties, his minivan was hijacked and stolen. Violence hit closer to home as he was preparing for his first major one-man stand-up shows in Johannesburg. His mother's ex-husband, the father of his two younger half-brothers, stalked her and shot her twice. Miraculously, the bullet to her head missed her brain, and she recovered fully, including her sense of humor. Noah related to Heller that when she saw him crying by her bedside, she told him "you must always look on the bright side.... At least now, you're officially the best-looking person in the family." Two weeks later, Noah went on to critical and popular success with a sold-out run of his show.

    Over the next few years, Noah produced more televised specials and began drawing the attention of international audiences. In 2012 he appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe, a famous comedy festival held in Scotland, and his one-man show "The Racist" sold out its entire run. Not long after, he made his first U.S. television appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, becoming the first African comedian to appear on the show and then the first to deliver a set on Late Night with David Letterman. He toured the States and found acceptance at comedy clubs as well. "Over time, you start to realize a lot of the challenges we face are so similar," Noah told Heller. "South Africa and America are both struggling with race and race relations and how to address the injustices of the past.... There are conversations I have in America where I go, 'This is exactly like being back home.'" Much of Noah's humor grew out of the absurdities of apartheid he had experienced growing up. "You have to find [the humor in] it, otherwise you'd be angry about everything," Daily Beast contributor Lloyd Grove quoted him as saying. "You'd literally be angry about everything."

    In 2014, Noah's tour schedule finally let up enough for him to accept an invitation to join the Daily Show, posing as a correspondent. He made three appearances, frequently poking fun at Americans' misperceptions of Africa, and then he was named to take over as host from Jon Stewart. After the announcement, there was some controversy when people scanned the comic's Twitter feed and found jokes they considered offensive. However, Noah had the support of his network and Stewart, who told the Christian Science Monitor, "I think without hesitation: Trevor Noah will earn your trust and respect.... Because my experience with him is that he is an incredibly thoughtful and considerate and funny and smart individual. And man, I think you give him that time, and it's going to be well worth it."

    With an international audience watching him closely--the show was carried in markets across the world the day after it aired in the United States--Noah made his first appearance as host of The Daily Show in September 2015. He kept the same format and many of the staff, but he added diversity by hiring some new writers and correspondents. While viewership did drop slightly overall in the first weeks, with Noah at the helm the show attracted more viewers in the prime 18-34 demographic. "I think we can be very proud of ourselves," Noah told Jason Lynch in Adweek, "because as a show we have gone from people saying, 'Will it be a trainwreck?' to people critiquing us as The Daily Show, saying this argument wasn't watertight and this could have been better." Given he felt more comfortable with the show, he added, he was not concerned about trying to measure up with Stewart or compete with other late-night hosts: "I don't truly think you can ever master your own game, so you just keep playing and trying to get below par. I strive for my own excellence. I'm competing against myself."

    Selected writings

    Stand-up specials
    Trevor Noah: The Daywalker, Nu Metro Home Entertainment-20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2009.
    Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal, Day 1 Films, 2011.
    Trevor Noah: That's Racist, Day 1 Films, 2012.
    Trevor Noah: African American, Showtime/Inception Media Group, 2013.
    Trevor Noah: It's My Culture, Day 1 Films, 2013.
    Trevor Noah: Nationwild Comedy Tour, Day 1 Films, 2015.
    Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation, Comedy Central, 2015.

    Further Readings

    Periodicals

    Adweek, November 2, 2015.
    Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 2015.
    Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada), June 27, 2015; August 1, 2015.
    New York Times, April 10, 2015; April 20, 2015; September 27, 2015; September 28, 2015.
    USA Today, March 31, 2015; September 28, 2015, pp. 1D-2D.
    Vogue, September 2015.

    Online

    "The Education of Trevor Noah: How The New Daily Show Host Made It," Daily Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/24/the-education-of-trevor-noah-how-the-new-daily-show-host-made-it.html (November 24, 2015).
    "South African Comedian Trevor Noah to Play Birmingham's Glee Club," Birmingham Post, http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/whats-on/comedy-gigs/south-african-comedian-trevor-noah-6319931 (November 24, 2015).
    "Trevor Noah: All the Way from Soweto to the Very Biggest Gig in Comedy," Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/trevor-noah-all-the-way-from-soweto-to-the-very-biggest-gig-in-comedy-10154937.html (November 24, 2015).

    Source Citation
    "Trevor Noah." Newsmakers, vol. 4, Gale, 2016. Biography in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1618006383/BIC1?u=schlager&xid=b08fac22. Accessed 10 July 2017.
    Gale Document Number: GALE|K1618006383

  • wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Noah

    Trevor Noah
    Trevor Noah 2017.jpg
    Noah in 2017
    Born 20 February 1984 (age 33)
    Johannesburg, South Africa
    Medium

    Stand-up television film books

    Years active 2002–present
    Genres

    Political/news satire observational comedy surreal humor black comedy insult comedy deadpan

    Subject(s)

    Mass media/news media/media criticism American politics South African culture current events religion pop culture race relations racism human sexuality

    Website www.trevornoah.com

    Trevor Noah (born 20 February 1984)[1] is a South African television and radio host, and comedian,[2] known for his role as host of The Daily Show on American network Comedy Central since September 2015.

    Noah began his career as an actor, presenter, and comedian in South Africa. He held several television hosting roles with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and was the runner-up in their fourth season of Strictly Come Dancing in 2008.[3] From 2010–2011, Noah was the creator and host of Tonight with Trevor Noah on M-Net and DStv.[4] His stand-up comedy career attained international success, leading to appearances on American late-night talk shows and British panel shows.

    In December 2014, Noah became the Senior International Correspondent for The Daily Show, an American satirical news program. The next year, he was announced as the successor of long-time host Jon Stewart, and has served as host of The Daily Show since 28 September 2015. Although ratings for the show declined following Stewart's departure,[5] Noah's tenure has been generally favourably reviewed, attracting particular attention for his interview with young conservative personality Tomi Lahren in late 2016.[6]

    Contents

    1 Early life
    2 Career
    2.1 The Daily Show
    2.2 Twitter controversy
    3 Influences
    4 Personal life
    5 Filmography
    5.1 Film
    5.2 Television
    6 Bibliography
    7 Awards
    8 References
    9 External links

    Early life

    Trevor Noah was born on 20 February 1984 in Johannesburg. His mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is black and of Xhosa ethnicity,[7][8][9][10] and his father, Robert, is white and of Swiss German ethnicity. When Trevor was 10 or 11 years old, his mother (although not the rest of the family) chose to convert to Judaism.[11] Noah spent his early youth in the private school of Maryvale College, a Catholic school in Johannesburg.[12][13][14] During his childhood, he attended Roman Catholic church every Sunday.[15] His parents' relationship was illegal at the time of his birth under apartheid (extraracial sexual relations and marriages were legalized under the amended Immorality Act of 1985, a year after Noah was born). His mother was jailed and fined by the South African white minority government,[16] and his father later moved back to Switzerland. Noah himself was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, Nomalizo Frances Noah.[17]
    Career

    When he was 18 (in 2002), Noah had a starring role on the South African soap opera Isidingo. He then began hosting his own radio show Noah's Ark on Gauteng's leading youth radio station, YFM. Noah dropped his radio show and acting to focus on comedy, and has performed with South African comedians such as David Kau, Kagiso Lediga, Riaad Moosa, Darren Simpson, Marc Lottering, Barry Hilton and Nik Rabinowitz,[18] international comedians such as Paul Rodriguez, Carl Barron, Dan Ilic and Paul Zerdin, and as the opening act for Gabriel Iglesias in November 2007 and Canadian comedian Russell Peters on his South African tour.

    Noah went on to host an educational program, Run The Adventure (2004–06) on SABC 2. In 2007, he hosted The Real Goboza, a gossip show on SABC 1,[3] and Siyadlala, a sports show also on the SABC. In 2008, Noah co-hosted, alongside Pabi Moloi, The Amazing Date (a dating game-show) and was a Strictly Come Dancing contestant in season 4. In 2009, he hosted the 3rd Annual South Africa Film and Television Awards (SAFTAs) and co-hosted alongside Eugene Khoza on The Axe Sweet Life, a reality competition series. In 2010, Noah hosted the 16th annual South African Music Awards and also hosted Tonight with Trevor Noah on MNet (in season 2, it moved to DStv's Mzansi Magic Channel).[4] In 2010, Noah also became a spokesperson and consumer protection agent for Cell C, South Africa's third largest cellular provider.[19]

    Noah has performed all over South Africa in The Blacks Only Comedy Show, the Heavyweight Comedy Jam, the Vodacom Campus Comedy Tour, the Cape Town International Comedy Festival, the Jozi Comedy Festival and Bafunny Bafunny (2010).[20][21] His stand-up comedy specials in South Africa include The Daywalker (2009), Crazy Normal (2011), That's Racist (2012), and It's My Culture (2013).

    In 2011, he moved to the United States.[22] On 6 January 2012, Noah became the first South African stand-up comedian to appear on The Tonight Show; and, on 17 May 2013, he became the first to appear on Late Show with David Letterman.[13][23] Noah was the subject of the 2012 documentary You Laugh But It's True.[24] The same year, he starred in the one-man comedy show Trevor Noah: The Racist,[25] which was based on his similarly titled South African special That's Racist. On 12 September, Noah was the Roastmaster in a Comedy Central Roast of South African Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr.[26] In 2013, he performed the comedy special Trevor Noah: African American.[27] On 11 October 2013, he was a guest on BBC Two's comedy panel show QI.[28] On 29 November 2013, he was a panelist on Channel 4 game show 8 Out of 10 Cats[29] and appeared on Sean Lock's team in 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown on 12 September 2014.
    The Daily Show
    Noah (second from left) at the 2015 Dubai Comedy Festival
    Further information: The Daily Show

    In December 2014, Noah became a recurring contributor on The Daily Show.[30] In March 2015, Comedy Central announced that Noah would succeed Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show; his tenure began on 28 September 2015.[31]
    Twitter controversy

    Within hours of his being announced as Stewart's successor, attention was drawn on the Internet to several jokes that Noah had made through his Twitter account, which were criticized as being offensive to women and Jews,[32][33] and to be making fun of the Holocaust.[34] Noah responded by tweeting, "To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn't land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian."[35] Comedy Central stood behind Noah, saying in a statement, "Like many comedians, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included... To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair. Trevor is a talented comedian with a bright future at Comedy Central."[36] Mary Kluk, chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), said that the jokes were not signs of anti-Jewish prejudice and that they were part of Noah's style of comedy.[37]
    Influences

    Noah has said of his comedic influences, "The kings are indisputable. Richard Pryor; [Bill] Cosby; for me personally I didn't know of him before I started comedy but Eddie Murphy changed my view on the thing and I definitely look up to him as a comedic influence. Chris Rock in terms of the modern black comedian and Dave Chappelle. Those are the guys that have laid the foundation and have moved the yardstick for all comedians, not just Black comedians."[38] He also cited Jon Stewart as an influence, following his appointment to succeed Stewart as host of The Daily Show.[39]

    Noah's mixed-race ancestry, his experiences growing up in Soweto, and his observations about race and ethnicity are leading themes in his comedy.[40][41]
    Personal life

    Noah is a polyglot; he speaks several languages including English, Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Afrikaans and some German and Spanish.[12][42]

    In 1992, Noah's mother was married to Ngisaveni Abel Shingange, and while married they had two sons, Andrew and Isaac. Trevor and his mother were physically abused by Shingange.[43] She divorced him in 1996. In 2009, after she became engaged to Sfiso Khoza, Shingange shot her in the leg and through the back of the head, stopping when the gun jammed; she survived as the bullet through her head avoided the brain and all major nerves and blood vessels, exiting with minor damage to her nostril. When Noah confronted him on the phone about the shooting, Shingange threatened his life, prompting Noah to leave Johannesburg for Los Angeles.[22][44][45] In 2011, Shingange was convicted of attempted murder, and sentenced the following year to three years of correctional supervision.[46] Noah stated that he hoped the attention surrounding the incident would help the domestic abuse problem in South Africa: "For years my mother reached out to police for help with domestic abuse, and nothing was ever done. This is the norm in South Africa. Dockets went missing and cases never went to court."[22]

    Noah has described himself as being progressive and having a global perspective.[47] However, he has clarified that he considers himself a "progressive person," but not a "political progressive" and prefers not to be categorized as either right or left in the context of US partisanship.[48][49]
    Filmography
    Film
    Year Title Role Notes
    2011 You Laugh But It's True Himself Documentary
    2012 Mad Buddies Bookie
    Television
    Year Title Role Notes
    2002 Isidingo Teen at party 1 episode
    2008 The Amazing Date Himself (host) 13 episodes
    2009 Trevor Noah: The Daywalker Himself Stand-up special
    2010–2011 Tonight with Trevor Noah Himself (host) 26 episodes; also creator, executive producer, writer
    2011 Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal Himself Stand-up special
    2012 Trevor Noah: That's Racist Himself Stand-up special
    2012 Comedy Central Roast of Steve Hofmeyr Himself (host) TV special
    2012 Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand Up Revolution Himself Episode: "2.1"
    2013 Trevor Noah: African American Himself Stand-up special
    2013 Trevor Noah: It's My Culture Himself Stand-up special
    2014–2015 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Himself (correspondent) 5 episodes
    2015–present The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Himself (host) Also executive producer, writer
    2015 Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation Himself Stand-up special[50]
    2017 Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark Himself Stand-up special
    2017 Nashville Himself Episode: "Fire and Rain"
    Bibliography

    Noah, Trevor (2016). Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. Random House. ISBN 978-0399588174.

    Awards
    Year Association Category Nominated work Result Ref.
    2012 South African Comics' Choice Award Comic of the Year Won [51]
    2014 Comic of the Year Nominated [52]
    2014 MTV Africa Music Awards Personality of the Year Nominated [53]
    2015 Personality of the Year Won [54]
    2016 NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Talk Series The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Nominated [55]
    2016 Outstanding Variety (Series or Special) The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Nominated
    2016 Outstanding Host in a News, Talk, Reality, or Variety (Series or Special) The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Nominated
    2016 Critics' Choice Television Award Best Talk Show The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Nominated [56]
    2017 Zora Neale Hurston Award — Born a Crime Won [57]
    2017 NAACP Image Awards Outstanding Literary Work – Biography / Auto-biography Born a Crime Won [58]
    2017 Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author Born a Crime Won
    2017 Writers Guild of America Award Comedy/Variety – Talk Series The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Nominated [59]
    2017 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award Favourite African Star Won [60]
    2017 GLAAD Media Award Outstanding Talk Show Episode The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for "Angelica Ross" Won [61]
    2017 MTV Movie & TV Awards Best Host The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Won [62]

  • author's site - http://www.trevornoah.com/

    About

    Trevor Noah is the most successful comedian in Africa and is the host of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show on Comedy Central. This year The Daily Show has been nominated for a Writers Guild Award (Comedy/Variety Series). Noah joined The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2014 as a contributor.

    It was recently announced that Noah will debut his 9th new comedy special Afraid of the Dark on Tuesday, February 21 on Netflix. The special was shot before a packed house in New York City at the Beacon Theatre on November 5, 2016. Last year, Noah debuted his one-hour stand-up special, Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation, on Comedy Central. Noah was the subject of David Paul Meyer’s award-winning documentary film You Laugh But It’s True which tells the story of his remarkable career in post-apartheid South Africa. His Showtime comedy special, Trevor Noah: African American premiered in 2013. He was nominated for “Personality of the Year” at the 2014 and 2015 MTV Africa Music Awards and won the award in 2015. Trevor’s success has also spanned to sold out shows over 5 continents.

    Born in South Africa to a black South African mother and a white European father, Noah has hosted numerous television shows including South Africa’s music, television and film awards, and two seasons of his own late night talk show, Tonight with Trevor Noah.

    In November 2016, Trevor released his first book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, which was an instant New York Times bestseller. Additionally, his performance on the Born a Crime audiobook was Audible’s highest rated audiobook of 2016, and has remained one of the top selling titles on Audible since its release. It was also nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, one for Outstanding Literary Work by a Debut Author and another for Outstanding Literary Work in the Biography/Auto-Biography category.

    The book is collection of personal stories about growing up in South Africa during the last gasps of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that came with its demise. Already known for his incisive social and political commentary, here Noah turns his focus inward, giving readers an intimate look at the world that shaped him. These are true stories, sometimes dark, occasionally bizarre, frequently tender, and always hilarious. Whether subsisting on caterpillars during months of extreme poverty or making comically hapless attempts at teenage romance, from the time he was thrown in jail to the time he was thrown from a speeding car driven by murderous gangsters, the experiences covered in this book will shock and amaze, even as they leave you rolling on the floor with laughter. The audiobook version performed by Trevor Noah is currently available from Audible Studios.

  • slate - http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cover_story/2016/01/why_america_isn_t_paying_attention_to_the_daily_show_with_trevor_noah_in.html

    Jan. 24 2016 8:02 PM
    Why Are Americans Ignoring Trevor Noah?
    This crazy campaign should be his coming-out party. Instead, it’s our first election since 2000 where The Daily Show might as well not exist.
    By Willa Paskin
    490454830
    Trevor Noah took over The Daily Show in September.

    Photo illustration by Holly Allen. Photos by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images, and Brad Barket/Comedy Central.

    In mid-January, with Bernie Sanders surging in the polls in Iowa, The Daily Show With Trevor Noah decided it was time to formally introduce Sanders to its audience. Sanders officially declared his candidacy this past May and has been squarely in the public eye for months now, his positions, politics, unkempt hair, and Brooklyn accent dissected all over cable news and razzed by every late-night show in the land (including The Daily Show). Still, Noah supposed its viewers “might be wondering [about] this rising new, yet old, force in the Democratic Party.”

    Then Noah launched into “The Legend of Bernie Sanders,” a relatively straightforward, jokey synopsis of Sanders’ accomplishments, from his birth in Brooklyn to his election as senator, climaxing in his album of folk songs. “If you ask me personally,” Noah said, “Bernie Sanders’ popularity has nothing to do with policy. I think it’s because he’s opposite Trump. See, the world craves balance. He’s the yin to Trump’s racist yang.” Noah concluded by pointing out that both Trump and Sanders regularly commit New York–style assaults on the pronunciation of the word huge. The segment was a précis of Noah’s Daily Show so far: something that looks like The Daily Show, that mugs and winks like The Daily Show, but that has only a diluted point of view.

    If you suspect that there is something more substantial to say about Sanders than that he talks funny, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart agrees. Stewart’s Daily Show did a segment on Sanders when he first announced his candidacy in May. It began with a clip reel of pundits disparaging Sanders as a whack job, as Stewart, talking fast, his voice pitched high, breathlessly ranted, “If Salvador Dalí and Dr. Seuss had a child and that child was raised by schizophrenic howler monkeys, it would be Bernie Sanders. Give me a taste of this crazy wacko cuckoo bird,” throwing to a clip of a Sanders sharing his policy positions, which include pay equity for women, campaign finance reform, and expanded social security. “What a … rational, slightly left-of-center mainstream politician,” Stewart said. “Bernie [isn’t] a crazy-pants cuckoo bird, it’s that we’ve all become so accustomed to stage-managed focus-group–driven candidates that authenticity comes across as lunacy.”

    This segment was taped in May, when Sanders’ campaign seemed like a hippie fantasy and Trump’s candidacy the fever dream of a feral child raised on nothing but reruns of The Apprentice, Rambo, and Dave. Yet it’s astute about the connection between Sanders and Trump, while also being prescient about why both have turned out to be viable candidates: One voter’s lunatic is another’s truth teller. Trevor Noah, comparing Sanders and Trump, called out their devotion to silent h’s simply to make a joke. But Stewart, without even trying, illuminated why those h’s are more than merely funny: To many Americans, those are the silent h’s of authenticity.

    Trevor Noah has been in the hosting chair for four months now, and his show has settled into a groove. If you tune into any episode, you will find something familiar enough, good for a chuckle but never a belly laugh, let alone a revelation. Noah could hardly be more charming; he is at ease in front of the camera, generous with his dimples. The writing staff, sans former head writer Elliott Kalan and Jo Miller, who left for Samantha Bee’s forthcoming new series, remained after Stewart’s departure, staving off any overt catastrophes.* Noah’s Daily Show has been attracting fewer than 1 million viewers in the all-important 18–49 demo, down more than 30 percent compared with Stewart’s last quarter. (Though not compared with his last year, in which Stewart’s demo ratings were roughly comparable. Stewart’s total viewership was significantly higher than Noah’s.) But if you watch The Daily Show night after night, you get the sense that the writers have adjusted their tactics for a very different kind of host—a Potemkin Jon Stewart, someone smooth and ingratiating who is reaching for unconverted viewers, instead of an inveterate political satirist preaching to the deeply informed.

    If you watch The Daily Show night after night, you get the sense that the writers have adjusted their tactics for a very different kind of host.

    In theory, I am the exact kind of person the new Daily Show is targeting (well, besides my gender and age, since The Daily Show is targeting 20-year-old men): a thirtysomething who cares about politics but doesn’t follow them that closely, not saturated in the details of the campaign trail but open to a sharp-tongued and eagle-eyed guide through a particularly internecine primary season. And yet I have found The Daily Show milquetoast and broad, diverting in the soothing way I associate with the Jimmys of network late night. On Trevor Noah’s Daily Show, outrages are an occasion for bemused laughter, not righteously funny indignation.

    As we head into a presidential election totally different from any election we’ve seen before, one all but tailored for The Daily Show, there is a Daily Show–shaped hole in the culture, despite a lesser version of the show airing every weeknight. Between Cruz’s authoritarian smarm, Hillary’s striving for the human touch, and the racist extravaganza that is Trump, American politics have never been more in need of puncturing by The Daily Show’s exasperated logic. But Noah backs away from thorny issues like they are bombs that can be defused with a charming quip. He’s out to neutralize, not to awaken. How did the program devoted to scaling bullshit mountain in all its incarnations, the program that once had a gospel choir sing “Go fuck yourself” to a Fox News correspondent, come to feel so beside the point?

    * * *

    At its best, The Daily Show is cathartic. It has served a real sociopolitical end by dragging the most offensive, inane, and ridiculous aspects of our politics under the bright lights and laughing at them with intelligence and wit and lowbrow goofiness. The Daily Show is an activist joker, deflating gasbags and ridiculing the sanctimonious status quo, so that instead of suffering through it alone, we can laugh at it together.

    Stewart turned himself gray trying to rain sanity, silliness, and outrage on the hypocrisy, mendacity, and idiocy that is our political discourse. For his effort and his anger, he was rewarded with trust and love, a fake newsman who became more indispensible than a real one. Where Stewart allowed himself to be a divining rod for the news, to feel it all and lose his cool accordingly, Noah is always smooth and telegenic, easy in his manner and on the eyes, never worked up, never letting things get too dark. The daft tweets that got Noah into so much trouble before he even took over The Daily Show seemed to presage a clumsy and unsubtle host, one who would say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But Tweetgate proved to be a red herring. Noah’s problem is not that he makes bad jokes but that he doesn’t take more chances to make great ones. All bloodless finesse, he never goes for the jugular.

    Consider Noah’s coverage of Obama’s recent State of the Union, in which he explained: “Typically a State of the Union is when a president lays out his agenda for the year to come,” just one of the moments when The Daily Show’s attempts to expand its demographic suggest it’s imagining an audience who might know nothing about politics at all. Noah often makes toothless jokes about physical appearances, from El Chapo’s bad shirt to a guy who looked like a “wizard” at a recent Democratic debate. The sight of one bespectacled tween in the crowd during the SOTU sent Noah on a reverie about an imaginary sitcom called “Senator Kid.” It was not a particularly funny flight of fancy, and it provided no analysis of the State of the Union. As Noah reached the end of the bit, perhaps sensing that it hadn’t gone over that well, he put his charm to work, scrunching up his nose and giggling hard. “I’m sorry, I can really see the show,” he shrugged.

    In the runup to Noah’s stewardship, The Daily Show announced that it would be moving away from its staple under Stewart: media criticism and, in particular, the relentless skewering of Stewart’s bête noir and raison d’etre, Fox News. This made sense. Stewart, with an assist from Stephen Colbert, had spent more than a decade slicing and dicing the cable news industry. His eviscerations were still widely popular with The Daily Show audience and the morning-after viral-video crowd, but they were old news, thanks in large part to Stewart’s own work. Now, instead of covering the coverage of the news, Noah covers the news itself, but this straightforward approach places The Daily Show in a crowded field full of people who are more experienced and engaged than Noah, including Colbert, John Oliver, Larry Wilmore, and soon enough, Samantha Bee.
    490454832
    Trevor Noah’s Daily Show is competing with a crowded late-night field.

    Photo illustration by Holly Allen. Photos by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images, and Brad Barket/Comedy Central.

    Compare Noah’s approach to that of Wilmore, a Daily Show expat who is now the host of Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show and who has a more eggheady—and earnest—vibe. Last week, The Daily Show and The Nightly Show, which air back to back, both ran segments about the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, The Daily Show two nights after The Nightly Show. The segments were similar and strong. Noah took an uncharacteristically heartfelt beat to observe that “this is people’s lives,” before working his way to his punch line. Observing that the crisis could have been avoided for $100 a day, he said, “I want to call out to all my friends in Africa, because my friends, for only $100 a day, we can save a village in America,” using Noah’s own biography to skewer America’s ludicrous exceptionalism.

    But next to Wilmore’s take on Flint, Noah’s was distant. Even when talking about something as outrageous as what happened in Flint, Noah tends to seem remote and jokey, rather than genuinely curious. Wilmore’s discussion of Flint was longer, more detailed, and more didactic, making Noah’s segment look funnier and fleet-footed by comparison—until the climax. That’s when Wilmore dove furiously in. “When you have politicians fall all over each other to see who can make the most draconian budget cuts,” Wilmore said, “you get decisions like this: citizens poisoned in a mania to save 100 fucking dollars a day. Officials in Flint, Michigan, should all be rounded up and put behind bars.”

    As we head into a presidential election all but tailored for The Daily Show, there is a Daily Show–shaped hole in the culture.

    This sort of outraged advocacy was a staple of Stewart’s tenure on The Daily Show, and Noah does not, as of yet, seem to have it in him. How could Noah feel as passionate about the intricacies of the American political system as Jon Stewart, or any American? He just got here. Distance can be a good thing for satirists—John Oliver, for instance, has clearly figured out how to leverage his non-Americanness as a way to make his perspective on U.S. politics feel even sharper and more objective. But The Daily Show hasn’t decided whether to play up Noah’s outsider perspective or to pretend it doesn’t exist.

    In one recent segment, Noah went from not knowing Dwight D. Eisenhower was dead to casually name-dropping Rudy Giuliani. He is flabbergasted by our news (understandably) rather than exercised about it. He recently played the rube across from correspondent Jessica Williams, psyched to see some ridiculous and insane campaign ads, leaving her with the meatier job of explaining how malevolent they really are. (Noah’s learning curve has given his correspondents, who include Williams and standouts Jordan Klepper and Roy Wood Jr., space to shine, often taking a more explanatory role than their host.)

    Playing naïve has also undermined Noah in the role he seemed positioned to do best: bring his outsider status and own personal history to bear on American racial politics. On the subject of race, he’s proven himself to be an astute observer who can deliver hard truths in a brightly appealing way. His most successful bit to date was the inspired observation that Donald Trump is an African dictator, which contextualizes Trump, while demystifying Africa, all while being hilarious. Noah and the writers have integrated more racial humor and commentary into the show than it had before, to say nothing of dramatically diversifying the series’ guests. Race is mentioned in nearly every episode, sometimes in unexpected ways, as in a riff about an app that can ask questions of the Founding Fathers: When Thomas Jefferson gets a look at Noah, he freaks out: “Holy shit, it’s a negro!”

    And yet on the subject of race, as with everything else, Noah often eases up, instead of going in. Early in his tenure, while introducing a segment called “Are All Cops Racist?” with Wood Jr. and Klepper, Noah noted that when it comes to perceptions of the police, “It really does seem like there’s no common ground. It’s as if this whole issue is just black and …” he tapered off, as his face lit up with an epiphany. But instead of saying the obvious “white,” he proclaimed, “It’s a cookie!” On screen, an image of that deli staple, the black-and-white cookie, popped up. “The problem is a cookie,” Noah said. This might be good for a dopey laugh if it were paired with some scathing analysis from Noah instead of his correspondents, but without it, it just seems embarrassingly simplistic, an empty joke.

    Noah is being held to a high standard, not of Jon Stewart when he started, but Jon Stewart when he finished. You can see the burden of this expectation in the episode taped after the Paris shootings. Noah—in what is only a Daily Show hosting requirement because Stewart made it so—took a moment at the top of the episode to say a few serious words. His speech, about appreciating everyday moments, felt like a forced entreaty to empathy: stumbling and clichéd, sincere but unsoothing, something he was supposed to do. Stewart could be self-righteous and defensive and smug. But he was a masterful modulator of tone, mirroring the emotional mood of his viewers, evincing anger when appropriate but also empathy and exasperation and joy. Noah hasn’t yet learned to display this kind of range. Being required to prematurely mimic it forces him to play audience proxy, poorly.

    In the geologic time with which late-night shows are judged relative to other television, the four months Noah has been in charge of The Daily Show is nothing. Making a late-night show work is widely understood to be a lengthy and arduous process. The show only recently updated its theme song, which now opens with a Timbaland-produced groove, instead of the familiar guitar-rock chug. Though the whole late-night landscape—Colbert, Oliver, Wilmore—is full of Stewart descendants who excel at exactly the kind of intensive, impassioned argumentation and analysis that Noah has been wanly simulating, Noah will have time to figure out his point of view and his writers time to figure out how to maximize his particular skills. But in the meantime, we’re left with a dulled Daily Show shedding relevancy in the midst of a wild and urgent election. Just think of the campaign insanities that have happened in the last week alone: Fiorina stealing off with a group of toddlers for a photo op, Rubio’s heterosexual panic, the National Review’s last gasp to shred Trump. Not so long ago, we would have learned of these bizarre happenings and thought, “I can’t wait to see what The Daily Show has to say about this.” Now, it’s only likely to have the eighth-best joke on the subject. You still may laugh, but an inessential Daily Show is a real loss.

    *Correction, Jan. 25, 2016: This article originally misstated that Elliott Kalan was the only writer to depart after Jon Stewart left The Daily Show. Jo Miller did as well.

  • LA Times - http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-sunday-conversation-trevor-noah-20170608-htmlstory.html

    Trevor Noah strikes a nerve – and ratings gold – as he steers 'The Daily Show' into the Trump era
    Trevor Noah
    Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," is having a frantic time keeping up with the Trump administration on his nightly talk show. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)
    By Greg Braxton

    Trevor Noah came under a bright and somewhat harsh spotlight when he took over Jon Stewart’s hosting chair at Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” The South African comedian was relatively unknown in America, and he received mixed responses in his first weeks.

    But almost two years after his debut, Noah and “The Daily Show” have landed in the top tiers of the highly competitive late-night arena. He scored one of the last White House interviews with President Obama. He notched his most-watched week ever in May, with more than 1 million viewers. Boosting his victory lap is his bestselling memoir, “Born a Crime,” his humorous and heartbreaking account of growing up poor in South Africa and having mixed parents.

    During a recent stop in Hollywood, Noah discussed his journey, why he doesn’t watch Fox News, “Trump fatigue” and what it’s like hosting a daily political show when news breaks almost hourly.
    Was there a particular point when you felt the show was finally finding its rhythm and hitting its groove?

    The Republican National Convention in Cleveland. It was the first time we had gotten out of the building and the show was in an unfamiliar space. Because of that, we were now engaged in this completely different thing, and we were all learning together. It was also when Donald Trump became real. Up to that moment, every fantasy of him being somewhat denounced by the Republicans was still lingering in people’s minds. Cleveland is when it all became real.
    What was it like for you interviewing President Obama?

    Magical, surreal. It was a really momentous occasion for me, personally and for the show. He said [goes into Obama impression], “Hope we’re, uh, going to have a serious conversation. Hope you’re, uh, not going to make me play games. Let’s talk.” It was him seeing us as an important show. saying, “This is not the place where I’m coming to be frivolous.”

    Never, ever in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be on a first-name basis with the president of the United States of America.

    — Trevor Noah

    Never, ever in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be on a first- name basis with the president of the United states of America. Especially the first black president. And maybe the last. Hopefully not.
    What’s it like to be in a situation where news is constantly breaking? Are there times when the show is ready, you’re going on and then a huge story breaks and you have to respond?

    I love it. It’s put us in a place where we can never be comfortable, where we have to viscerally react to what is happening with measure and thought. It’s really fun to be in a space where you can’t settle into a rhythm, you can’t completely know what your day is going to be. Now we see the show as a living organism that adapts and responds to what’s happening.
    Is there any potential danger of “Trump fatigue”?

    I definitely think so. But I believe people aren’t often good with separating Trump from what is happening within the the world he inhabits. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. That is something that some people still refuse to acknowledge, nor do they wish to accept as a reality. That’s the first mistake people make, in my opinion. And this president in particular has an impressive ability to create and sustain scandal and news like no one before.

    I don’t think of Donald Trump as the story. I see this as America’s story, and Donald Trump is the antagonist. America is dealing with Donald Trump, not the other way around. That character offers up the opportunity to have conversations about things that people may not have otherwise been interested in. On the griddle of “The Daily Show’s” barbecue, we cook different foods every day. But the fuel we use to cook that food is Donald Trump.
    Do you watch Fox News?

    No. Fox is trying to convince me that what Trump is doing is not scandalous. If I’m watching CNN, I’m watching a shouting match half the time. I watch very little cable news, to be honest. I read everything.
    There was a lot of outrage and advertiser pullout when the sexual harassment controversy and the Bill O’Reilly furor broke out at Fox News. Yet there was very little criticism through the years when O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly and other Fox personalities made what could be considered openly racist comments.

    The tipping point of outrage or justice is very strange sometimes. I struggle to understand it myself. When the Fox thing happened, I found it particularly intriguing that these people who had been saying the most racist things for so long were now being taken to task for something that in some ways paled in comparison. What I’ve come to realize in America, which is really scary, is that many people don’t see black people as human beings. They see them as being predisposed to crime, people who celebrate poverty and suffering. I think part of it is — and it’s a painful thing to say — is that maybe there aren’t enough people in America who have a personal connection with black people for them for them to be as outraged by those statements as they are about sexual assault. Everyone knows a woman. Not everyone knows a black person.
    It’s 2017, and you are the only host of color of a late-night show.

    You would hope there would be more. I’m excited to see Robin Thede’s show coming on BET. That’s not just a host of color, but a female host of color. Also, I may have only one show, but I can have many people on that show who have diverse voices. That’s what I try and do.
    Would you like to interview Donald Trump?

    Absolutely. I have many questions for him I don’t think many people would ask.
    You’ve reached out to conservatives for your show. Your interview with conservative firebrand Tomi Lahren went viral. You were very respectful to her.

    It’s showing the leaks in the wall. It’s important to expose the flaws of their argument. When I can sit across from Tomi Lahren and she says black people are protesting because they’re crybabys and [NFL quarterback] Colin Kaepernick shouldn’t kneel during the National Anthem, that’s not the right way to protest, then I get to ask, “When is the right time for black people to protest?” And when she can’t answer that question, whether she likes to admit it or not, she has now realized the irrationality of the position she is in or put everyone else in.
    You spend all week doing the show and then hit the road doing stand-up instead of taking weekends off ...

    Stand-up comedy is my therapy; it’s where I thrive; it’s what I’ve done for more than a decade; it’s the purest expression of how I think and who I am. Second, it helps me hone my message and how I communicate with people. When you’re in front of an audience, you can connect with them on what they’re thinking. You can lose sight of that in a TV studio.
    How long do you think you’ll be doing “The Daily Show”?

    As long as I feel I can positively contribute to a conversation in the community that I’m in, whether it’s late night or the political discourse, I will continue the show as long as I’m having fun. I’m just getting started, I’ll tell you that much.
    OVERTIME: What are you reading these days?

    “The Hip Hop Wars” by Tricia Rose. I’m re-reading “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander.

  • IMDb - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3696388/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

    SEE RANK
    Trevor Noah
    Writer | Producer | Soundtrack
    Trevor Noah was born on February 20, 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a writer and producer, known for The Daily Show (1996), Trevor Noah: African American (2013) and Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (2017). See full bio »
    Born: February 20, 1984 in Johannesburg, South Africa

    Filmography
    Jump to: Writer | Producer | Soundtrack | Actor | Director | Thanks | Self | Archive footage
    Hide Hide Writer (14 credits)
    2015-2017 The Daily Show (TV Series) (writer - 285 episodes)
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    2017 Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (TV Special documentary)
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    2015 Trevor Noah: The Nationwild Comedy Tour
    2013 Trevor Noah: It's My Culture (Video)
    2013 Trevor Noah: African American (TV Special) (written by)
    2012 Trevor Noah: That's Racist (Video documentary) (writer)
    2012 Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand-Up Revolution (TV Series) (writer - 1 episode)
    - Episode #2.1 (2012) ... (writer)
    2011 Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal (Video documentary)
    2011 WROARF Public Service Announcement (Short) (writer)
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    2017 Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (TV Special documentary) (executive producer)
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    2013 Trevor Noah: It's My Culture (Video) (executive producer)
    2013 Trevor Noah: African American (TV Special) (executive producer)
    2012 Trevor Noah: That's Racist (Video documentary) (executive producer)
    2011 Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal (Video documentary) (executive producer)
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    2017 The Daily Show (TV Series) (performer - 3 episodes)
    - Salma Hayek Pinault (2017) ... (performer: "I Hope")
    - Alynda Segarra (2017) ... (performer: "The Forgotton Man")
    - Joy Reid (2017) ... (performer: "No More Excuses")
    2012 Trevor Noah: That's Racist (Video documentary) (performer: "That's Racist Main Theme") / (writer: "That's Racist Main Theme")
    2011 Trevor Noah: Crazy Normal (Video documentary) (performer: "Welcome to the show") / (writer: "Welcome to the show")
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    2017 Nashville (TV Series)
    Trevor Noah
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    2012 Mad Buddies
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    2011 Taka Takata
    2002 Isidingo (TV Series)
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    2017 Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King (TV Special) (special thanks)
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    2014-2017 The Daily Show (TV Series)
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    Show all 289 episodes
    2015-2017 The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (TV Series)
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    - Trevor Noah/Ilana Glazer/Sam Richardson (2017) ... Himself
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    - Sean Penn/Sutton Foster/Regina Spektor (2016) ... Himself
    - Trevor Noah/Allen Iverson/Rachel Maddow (2016) ... Himself
    - Trevor Noah/Ban Ki-Moon/Chris Stapleton (2015) ... Himself
    2017 The View (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Trevor Noah/View Your Deal (2017) ... Himself
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    2017 2017 MTV Movie & TV Awards (TV Special)
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    2017 Extra (TV Series)
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    - Episode #23.201 (2017) ... Himself
    2017 The Messy Truth with Van Jones (TV Mini-Series documentary)
    Himself
    - Episode #1.4 (2017) ... Himself
    2015-2017 The Late Late Show with James Corden (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Trevor Noah/Laverne Cox/Luke Wilson/Noah Cyrus (2017) ... Himself
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    - Trevor Noah/Odette Annable/Eric Idle (2015) ... Himself
    2017 Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (TV Special documentary)
    Himself
    2017 The 48th NAACP Image Awards (TV Special)
    Himself - presenter
    2016 ABC News Nightline (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode dated 13 December 2016 (2016) ... Himself
    2016 HARDtalk (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Trevor Noah (2016) ... Himself
    2016 Watch What Happens: Live (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Trevor Noah and John Legend (2016) ... Himself
    2016 YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge (Video short)
    Himself
    2016 The National (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode dated 4 December 2016 (2016) ... Himself
    2016 Peston on Sunday (TV Series)
    Himself - Guest, Host - 'The Daily Show with Trevor Noah'
    - Episode #2.11 (2016) ... Himself - Guest, Host - 'The Daily Show with Trevor Noah'
    2016 Breakfast (TV Series)
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    - Episode dated 25 November 2016 (2016) ... Himself
    2016 Tavis Smiley (TV Series)
    Himself - Guest
    - Episode dated 23 November 2016 (2016) ... Himself - Guest
    2016 Chelsea (TV Series)
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    - Dinner Party: The Best Relationships (2016) ... Himself (as Trevor)
    2016 PBS NewsHour (TV Series)
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    - Episode dated 17 November 2016 (2016) ... Himself
    2015-2016 Live! with Kelly (TV Series)
    Himself / Himself - Guest
    - Guest Co-Host Ryan Seacrest/Trevor Noah/OneRepublic (2016) ... Himself
    - Guest Co-Host Moris Chestnut/Trevor Noah/Sabrina Carpenter/Frankie Ballard (2016) ... Himself - Guest
    - Anne Hathaway/Trevor Noah (2015) ... Himself
    2016 CBS This Morning (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode #5.273 (2016) ... Himself
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    2016 CBS News Sunday Morning (TV Series)
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    - Episode #39.7 (2016) ... Himself
    2016 The Star Wars Show (TV Series short)
    Himself - Comedian & Host: The Daily Show
    - Trevor Noah Interview, Star Wars at Shanghai Disneyland, and More (2016) ... Himself - Comedian & Host: The Daily Show
    2016 MSNBC Live (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode dated 25 July 2016 (2016) ... Himself
    2016 Amanpour. (TV Series)
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    - Episode dated 18 July 2016 (2016) ... Himself
    2016 Good Morning America (TV Series)
    Himself - Guest
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    2016 Hannibal Buress: Hannibal Takes Edinburgh (TV Special documentary)
    Himself
    2016 The 47th NAACP Image Awards (TV Movie)
    Himself
    2016 Late Night with Seth Meyers (TV Series)
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    - Trevor Noah/David Cross/X Ambassadors/Glenn Kotche (2016) ... Himself
    2015 Trevor Noah: Pay Back the Funny (TV Special)
    Himself - Host
    2015 The 18th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor: Celebrating Eddie Murphy (TV Movie)
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    2015 Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation (TV Special)
    Himself
    2015 Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: Single Shot (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Jerry Is How Old (2015) ... Himself
    - Joke-Ology (2015) ... Himself
    - Forty Five Seconds (2015) ... Himself
    - A Car Is Born (2015) ... Himself
    - Speaking Briefly (2015) ... Himself
    Show all 6 episodes
    2015 Jimmy Kimmel Live! (TV Series)
    Himself - Guest
    - Anna Faris/Trevor Noah/Brett Eldredge (2015) ... Himself - Guest
    2015 The Ellen DeGeneres Show (TV Series)
    Himself / Himself - Guest
    - Heidi Klum/Trevor Noah/Alessia Cara (2015) ... Himself
    - Taraji P. Henson/Lea Michele/James Taylor (2015) ... Himself - Guest
    2015 Entertainment Tonight (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode dated 19 October 2015 (2015) ... Himself
    2015 Today (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode dated 28 September 2015 (2015) ... Himself
    - Episode dated 23 September 2015 (2015) ... Himself
    2015 The 67th Primetime Emmy Awards (TV Special)
    Himself - Audience Member
    2015 Would I Lie to You? (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode #9.6 (2015) ... Himself
    2015 The John Bishop Show (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode #1.8 (2015) ... Himself
    2015 The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Ryan Seacrest/Trevor Noah/Tig Notaro (2015) ... Himself
    2015 Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (TV Series)
    Himself
    - That's the Whole Point of Apartheid, Jerry (2015) ... Himself
    2015 Celebrity Squares (TV Series)
    Himself
    - Episode #2.8 (2015) ... Himself
    2015 Red Nose Day (TV Special)
    Himself
    2015 Trevor Noah: The Nationwild Comedy Tour
    Himself
    2014 The Royal Variety Performance 2014 (TV Movie)
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    2014 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (TV Series)
    Himself - Contestant
    - Episode #4.9 (2014) ... Himself - Contestant
    2013 8 Out of 10 Cats (TV Series)
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    - Episode #16.9 (2013) ... Himself
    2013 Trevor Noah: It's My Culture (Video)
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    2013 Live at the Apollo (TV Series)
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    2013 Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell (TV Series)
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    2013 Late Show with David Letterman (TV Series)
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    2013 Comedy Up Late (TV Series)
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    2013 Funny Business (TV Series documentary)
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    2012 Trevor Noah: That's Racist (Video documentary)
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    2012 Gabriel Iglesias Presents Stand-Up Revolution (TV Series)
    Himself / Comedian
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    2012 Comedy Central Roast of Steve Hofmeyr (TV Special)
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    2012 Chelsea Lately (TV Series)
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    - Episode #6.108 (2012) ... Himself - Round Table
    2012 The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (TV Series)
    Himself - 'Meal or No Meal' Judge / Himself - Guest Comic
    - Episode #20.118 (2012) ... Himself - 'Meal or No Meal' Judge
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    2011 You Laugh But It's True (Documentary)
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    2017 Entertainment Tonight (TV Series)
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    2015 Celebrity Page (TV Series)
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    - Episode dated 29 September 2015 (2015) ... Himself
    2014 QI (TV Series)
    Himself
    - VG Part Two (2014) ... Himself

The Dash-cam Video of Philando Castile's Murder 'Broke' Trevor Noah
(June 22, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 New York Media
http://www.vulture.com/
Byline: Dee Lockett

Like many, Trevor Noah thought he'd reached his emotional limit over the death of Philando Castile and last week's acquittal of the cop who shot and killed him. This week alone on The Daily Show, Noah has exposed the (http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/trevor-noah-calls-out-nra-philando-castile-death.html?utm_source=nym&utm_medium=f1&utm_campaign=feed-full) hypocrisy in the NRA staying silent when they otherwise would be outraged, and talked about his own(http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/trevor-noahs-been-stopped-by-american-cops-8-to-10-times.html?utm_source=nym&utm_medium=f1&utm_campaign=feed-full) frequent experiences with racial profiling in America. But then Noah saw the dash-cam footage of Castile's murder and says that while it personally "broke" him, "you probably should watch it." After playing it on last night's show, Noah explained why: "Forget race, are we all watching the same video? The video where a law-abiding man followed the officer's instructions to the letter of the law and was killed regardless? People watched that video and then voted to acquit?" The verdict and this footage, Noah says, ultimately prove that "in America, it is officially reasonable to be afraid of a person just because they're black."

To access, purchase, authenticate, or subscribe to the full-text of this article, please visit this link:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/06/trevor-noah-philando-castile-dashcam-video-broke-me.html?utm_source=nym&utm_medium=f1&utm_campaign=feed-full

Dee Lockett

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Dash-cam Video of Philando Castile's Murder 'Broke' Trevor Noah." Vulture, 22 June 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA496376890&it=r&asid=afa3ba2d183ca9316e0ae52fc48f35f1. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A496376890

The daily show
423.16 (May 24, 2017): p18.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 e5 Global Media, LLC
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Daily Show COMEDY CENTRAL Amid Trump tailspinning. Trevor Noah had his best week ever. He topped his 2015 premier week with a nightly average of 1.1 million viewers.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The daily show." Hollywood Reporter, 24 May 2017, p. 18. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA494098876&it=r&asid=f76befc9c369e863c66a0115739ea227. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A494098876

Born a Crime
Jennifer M. Dowell
25.5 (February-March 2017): p23.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 AudioFile
http://www.audiofilemagazine.com
BORN A CRIME

Trevor Noah

Read by Trevor Noah

Comedian Trevor Noah's stories of growing up in South Africa are vivid, sometimes harrowing, and often laugh-out-loud funny. The bonus of audio is that listeners get to hear Noah tell these stories in his South African-accented English, as well as hear him speak snippets of various other South African languages. Noah (who succeeded Jon Stewart as the host of "The Daily Show") is a natural storyteller--skilled, engaging, and relatable. Growing up mixed-race (his mother was Xhosa and his father was white) in both pre- and post-apartheid South Africa meant that Noah constantly struggled to find where he belonged. Noah's narration offers insights and intimacy, and as he gives voice to his mother, his friends, and his younger self, listeners are invited in to glimpse his world. J.M.D.

Audible, Inc./ Brilliance Audio 8.75 hrs. Unabridged

Trade Ed.: CD ISBN 9781531865030 $19.99 (also MP3, dd)

Dowell, Jennifer M.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Dowell, Jennifer M. "Born a Crime." AudioFile Magazine, Feb.-Mar. 2017, p. 23. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490550989&it=r&asid=d94e03a78af7b19b65f799673ea82c03. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A490550989

Born A Crime
Priscilla Kipp
(Dec. 2016): p43.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
BORN A CRIME

By Trevor Noah

Spiegel & Grau

$28, 304 pages

ISBN 9780399588174

Audio, eBook available

MEMOIR

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When Trevor Noah succeeded Jon Stewart as host of "The Daily Show" last year, the 32-year-old South African comedian had huge shoes to fill. Could he prove himself a worthy successor? Who was he, anyway? In his fascinating memoir, Born a Crime, we get to know Comedy Central's import, and the evidence is clear: Challenges are nothing new to Noah.

Born in 1984 to a Swiss father and a black mother, Noah was living proof that his parents had violated the law forbidding "illicit" relationships between whites and blacks. His mixed looks marked him as an outsider. Growing up without his father, he moved with his fearless, fanatical mother between the black and white townships near Johannesburg, rarely feeling accepted anywhere. Poverty precluded any hope of escape.

Engaging and insightful, Born a Crime is not a rags-to-riches story; the memoir ends before Noah finds success. Instead, the book reveals the hard details of a grim life: a mother and son who, together, survived the cruelties of apartheid and domestic violence. Ironically, today it is Noah's perspective as an outsider that serves him so well in his starring role in U.S. comedy.

Kipp, Priscilla

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kipp, Priscilla. "Born A Crime." BookPage, Dec. 2016, p. 43. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471383271&it=r&asid=1fb7c27755c2d55970465122317c6043. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A471383271

Trevor Noah Spent a Week in Jail, and 6 Other Things We Learned from His Memoir, Born a Crime
(Nov. 18, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 New York Media
http://www.vulture.com/
Byline: Elise Czajkowski

When Trevor Noah was announced as the host of The Daily Show last year, he was an unknown to many Americans, despite having established himself as a stand-up megastar across Africa and gaining a following around the world. One of this earlier stand-up shows, "Born a Crime," focused on his childhood as a mixed-race kid in apartheid-era South Africa, where his parents were not allowed to be seen in public together and he struggled to fit in with any group because of his race and background. His new book of the same name, subtitled (https://www.amazon.com/Born-Crime-Stories-African-Childhood/dp/0399588175) Stories From a South African Childhood covers the same ground in much more (often horrific) detail. The book is clearly written with an American audience in mind, at times explaining the history of South Africa and apartheid and comparing it to the U.S.'s own history of oppression and race relations. Even longtime fans are likely to learn new tidbits about Noah in this memoir: Here are seven things we discovered about him.

Noah had a very religious childhood, attendeding three churches every Sunday.

Noah's mother was very religious, and she felt that each of the churches "gave her something different." They started the day at a "jubilant" mixed-race church, a suburban megachurch with an ex-bodybuilder for a pastor, where the music was contemporary Christian rock and the words were displayed, karaoke-style, on a jumbotron. Next they went to an "analytical" white church, where Noah attended Sunday school and became enthralled by the stories of the Bible - he claims that he always won the Bible quizzes at Sunday school, and that he can still quote anything from the Old Testament and the Gospels, chapter and verse. Finally, the duo would head to a "passionate, cathartic" black church, where the service would last for three to four hours and sometimes feature pastors casting demons out of the congregants.

Noah was raised speaking English as his first language.

This was a deliberate choice from his Xhosa mother, to give him more opportunities later in life. "If you're black in South Africa," he writes, "speaking English is the one thing that can give you a leg up. English is the language of money. English comprehension is equated with intelligence. If you're looking for a job, English is the difference between getting the job or staying unemployed. If you're standing in the dock, English is the difference between getting off with a fine or going to prison." Because of this, Noah's Xhosa grandmother used to ask him to pray in English. The Bible had been in English when it first came to South Africa so she felt that Jesus spoke English, and thus that English-language prayers got answered first.

His mother chose the name Trevor because it means nothing.

It is traditional in Xhosa families to give a child a name with a deep meaning, and those names often become self-fulfilling. For example, Noah's mother's name meant "She Who Gives Back," and he describes her as someone constantly helping everyone around her. But when Noah was born, she named him Trevor specifically because it had no meaning in South Africa, nor any biblical reference. "It's just a name," he explains. "My mother wanted her child beholden to no fate. She wanted me to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone."

He's a very talented letter-writer.

When he was in grade school, Noah and his mom would regularly spar like lawyers, "debating over loopholes and technicalities", and eventually his quick mind frustrated her in these arguments. They began writing letters to one another, laying out all their points for the other side to address. She might slip a note under his door with a list of chores to be done, and he would respond with a letter detailing his accomplishments, and explaining why certain chores were unable to be performed. Her letters often quoted relevant Bible verses, while his began with "To Whom It May Concern:"; both would sign off their notes with "Yours sincerely."

He became a profitable businessman in high school.

Early on in his high-school years, Noah began making money by reselling and delivering food from a local convenience store to fellow students during their break period, allowing them to avoid the long lines at the store and him to turn a tidy profit. This meant he floated around his high school like a social butterfly, mixing with different groups without ever being fully included in their circles. Later, he began selling copied CDs to fellow high-school students, using the network he had established delivering food to sell music and video games. Originally, Noah sold CDs burned by an upperclassman, but he eventually started making them on his own, producing mix CDs and original party mixes. With his huge collection of digital music, he became a highly sought-after DJ for street parties.

He convinced high-school students he was Busta Rhymes's hype man.

With all the money he earned from his various businesses in high school, Noah bought a pair of Timberlands. The boots were rare in South Africa but admired for their association with American rappers, who were incredibly popular. One of Noah's friends, a trickster named Tom, invited him to a talent show in his neighborhood and insisted that that he wear the boots. When he got there, he found out that Tom had promised the organizers of the talent show that he was bringing Spliff Star, Busta Rhymes's hype man, and that he needed to be paid up-front for it. Having gotten his money, he convinced Noah to go onstage and pretend to be Spliff Star. The audience didn't speak English, so Noah made up some lyrics on the fly and the crowd believed they were seeing a famous American rapper.

Noah was arrested as a teenager and spent a week in jail.

As a teenager, Noah had taken a junker of a car from the workshop of his stepfather, who was a mechanic with a collection of old cars and license plates. He was pulled over soon after. "Cops in South Africa don't give you a reason when they pull you over," he writes. "Cops pull you over because they're cops and they have the power to pull you over; it's as simple as that." Unfortunately for Noah, he was actually breaking the law, and when the plates on the car didn't match the registration, he was arrested on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle. He spent a week in jail, trying to figure out the best way out and getting along with his fellow inmates, who didn't know what to make of him. Eventually he was released on bail, and when he returned home, he tried to pretend that he'd simply been staying with a friend. In time, he realized that his mother had been the one to hire his lawyer and pay his bail.

To access, purchase, authenticate, or subscribe to the full-text of this article, please visit this link:

http://www.vulture.com/2016/11/trevor-noah-born-a-crime-book.html?mid=full-rss-vulture

Elise Czajkowski

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Trevor Noah Spent a Week in Jail, and 6 Other Things We Learned from His Memoir, Born a Crime." Vulture, 18 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470504988&it=r&asid=e54890429b5349bdeec6bd589e2895f5. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A470504988

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
263.44 (Oct. 31, 2016): p67.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah. Random/Spiegel & Grau, $28 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-58817-4

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Having thoroughly mined his South African upbringing in his standup comedy and monologues on The Daily Show, Noah here tells the whole story in this witty and revealing autobiography. Born to a black African mother and a white Swedish father, Noah violated the Immorality Act of 1927, which outlawed interracial relationships. Though apartheid ended a decade after Noah's birth, its legacy lived on in the country's nigh-inescapable ghettos and perpetual racial conflicts, continuing to affect his life as he came of age. Noah's story is the story of modern South Africa; though he enjoyed some privileges of the region's slow Westernization, his formative years were shaped by poverty, injustice, and violence. Noah is quick with a disarming joke, and he skillfully integrates the parallel narratives via interstitial asides between chapters to explain the finer details of African culture and history for the uninformed. Perhaps the most harrowing tales are those of his abusive stepfather, which form the book's final act (and which Noah cleverly foreshadows throughout earlier chapters), but equally prominent are the laugh-out-loud yarns about going to the prom, and the differences between "White Church" and "Black Church." (Nov.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. 67+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470462568&it=r&asid=865705d5a6cd573dfdb229e0be19b9ad. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A470462568

Born a crime
Dave Stern
263.44 (Oct. 31, 2016): pS26.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Trevor Noah's lightning-fast ascendancy to the top of the comedic heap--after only six months as a correspondent for Comedy Central's Daily Show in 2015, he was chosen as host upon Jon Stewart's departure--is well-known. But Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Random/Spiegel & Grau) proves Trevor Noah 's real-life story is even more astonishing.

Born a Crime is both an affecting glimpse back at his childhood and a singular exploration of race and racial tension in South Africa. When Noah first decided to write a book about growing up in South Africa under apartheid, he didn't have to look far for a title. The Immorality Act of 1927 had made interracial romance against the law, and Noah's very existence was proof his parents had violated that statute: his mother is Xhosa; his father is Swiss. Which was why young Trevor spent the first few years of his life, in the early 1980s, literally hidden from the world.

"Where most children are proof of their parents' love, I was the proof of their criminality," Noah recalls. "The only time I could be with my father was indoors. My mother tells me that once, when I was a toddler, he was walking a good bit away from us, and I ran after him, screaming, 'Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!' People starting looking. He was terrified. He panicked and ran away. I thought it was a game and kept chasing him."

Noah's father had good reason to panic. The real-world consequences of being born "Colored," the African term for a mixed-race child, were all too terrifying, Noah says. "My gran still tells the story of when I was three years old and, fed up with being a prisoner [inside the house], I dug a hole under the gate in the driveway, wriggled through and ran off. Everyone panicked.... I had no idea how much danger I was putting everyone in. The family could have been deported, my gran could have been arrested, my mom might have gone to prison, and I probably would have been packed off to the group home for colored kids."

"During apartheid, there was slavery," he notes, "that's how everyone was employed." When democracy came, all the old rules went out the door. Noah, and thousands of others in his situation, had to learn how to survive.

His way out was a CD burner, given to him by a white friend, that let him make, and sell, pirated copies of CDs across the township. It was illegal, to be sure. But Noah has no regrets on that score.

"They love to say, 'give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime,"' Noah says. "What they don't say is, 'And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod!"'

Special Event: Trevor Noah

Sunday, Nov. 13, 6-7 p.m. Chapman Conference Center, Building 3, 2nd floor, Room 3210, Tickets $40

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Stern, Dave. "Born a crime." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. S26+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470462629&it=r&asid=5f81cae6e98fac8294ba3872750e0be4. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A470462629

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Donna Seaman
113.3 (Oct. 1, 2016): p8.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.

By Trevor Noah.

Nov. 2016. 304p. Spiegel & Grau, $28 (9780399588174). 792.702.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

South African comedian Noah brings a fresh and tonic perspective to the role of host for The Daily Show, frequently joking about life as a mixed-race child under the tyranny of apartheid. He now reveals the full brunt of the terror and diabolical absurdity he endured in this substantial collection of staggering personal essays deftly shaped by his stand-up gifts for timing and precision. Incisive, funny, and vivid, these true tales are anchored to his portrait of his courageous, rebellious, and religious mother, who defied racially restrictive laws to secure an education and a career for herself--and to have a child with a white Swiss German even though sex between whites and blacks was illegal; neither parent could be seen in public with their son. So dangerous was life for mischievous, polyglot Noah that he spent much of his time alone indoors and later endured hunger, homelessness, jail, and violence. But his episodic and electrifying memoir sparkles with funny stories of epic teen awkwardness, astounding accounts of his nervy entrepreneurial success as a music bootlegger and DJ, and vibrant and insightful descriptions of daily life in Johannesburg and Soweto. Noah's coming-of-age paralleled South Africa's emergence from apartheid, and his candid and compassionate essays deepen our perception of the complexities of race, gender, and class. Hopefully, Noah will continue to tell his bracing and redefining story.--Donna Seaman

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: High powered promotion will push celebrity comedian Noah's book forward, and buzz about just how excellent a work it is will sustain readership.

YA/M: YAs will be riveted by Noah's complicated and frightening childhood, his resilience, and his gutsy teen hip-hop adventures. DS.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Seaman, Donna. "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 8. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467147904&it=r&asid=a9ae2420080c21bcacb555d82b345af8. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A467147904

The South African host of US TV's Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tried to explain to US audiences how Zuma was elected in 2009 without ever being formally cleared by a court of hundreds of graft charges
.561 (May 2016): p8.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 IC Publications Ltd.
http://www.africasia.com/icpubs
The South African host of US TV's Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tried to explain to US audiences how Zuma was elected in 2009 without ever being formally cleared by a court of hundreds of graft charges.

"I know, I know, that should have been a red flag to South Africans," Noah said, "but ever since apartheid we've strived to be colour-blind, so all we saw was a flag."

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The South African host of US TV's Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tried to explain to US audiences how Zuma was elected in 2009 without ever being formally cleared by a court of hundreds of graft charges." New African, May 2016, p. 8. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453917257&it=r&asid=c4a6d708111009ae419c091bd6d0275d. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A453917257

The Cosmo guy: Trevor Noah
260.5 (May 2016): p48.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Hearst Communications. Reprinted with permission of Hearst.
http://www.hearst.com
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

COSMO PUTS THE STAND-UP COMIC, SOUTH AFRICAN EXPORT, AND BIGGEST CHARMER THE DAILY SHOW HAS EVER SEEN (SORRY, JON) IN THE HOT SEAT.

HE FOR SHE

"People think feminism means a world of Amazons running tribes with no men. But really, you're a feminist if you think women are equal to men. So by the dictionary definition, yes, I'm a feminist. But I think everyone should be--it should be normal."

HOW TO SPEAK SOUTH AFRICAN

"Sawubona--it's Zulu. It's 'hello,' but it's so powerful because it means 'I see you as a human being.' It's what a greeting should be: 'I know you're part of my world.' That's all you really need: a sawubona and a smile."

WHAT HE'S STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT ABOUT WOMEN

"I grew up with a single mom. We couldn't live with my dad because of the [apartheid] laws in South Africa. So strangely enough, I've spent more time trying to figure out men. Like, I never understood why for men, one woman isn't enough. We're a bunch of idiots!"

IN HER SHOES

"It's tough for me to resist a woman who can walk in high heels. I used to try on my mom's all the time, so I know how hard it is to look confident in them. If a woman walks well in them, I'm like, 'Wow. You do your thing, girl!'"

--RACHEL MOSELY

WHO ARE YOU OBSSESSED WITH? TWEET @COSMOPOLITAN #COSMOGUY AND YOU COULD SEE HIM ON THIS PAGE!

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Cosmo guy: Trevor Noah." Cosmopolitan, May 2016, p. 48. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA449313695&it=r&asid=109d9a55d3ba184412095b5766ecb325. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A449313695

Why we still miss Jon Stewart: the Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, is smooth and charming, but he has yet to find an edge that's equal to the political moment
James Parker
317.2 (Mar. 2016): p34.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Atlantic Media, Ltd.
http://www.theatlantic.com
IT'S A PSYCHIC LAW of the American workplace: By the time you give your notice, you've already left. You've checked out, and for the days or weeks that remain, a kind of placeholder-you, a you-cipher, will be doing your job. It's a law that applies equally to dog walkers, accountants, and spoof TV anchormen. Jon Stewart announced that he was quitting The Daily Show in February 2015, but he stuck around until early August, and those last months had a restless, frazzled, long-lingering feel. A smell of ashes was in the air. The host himself suddenly looked quite old: beaky, pique-y, hollow-cheeky. For 16 years he had shaken his bells, jumped and jangled in his little host's chair, the only man on TV who could caper while sitting behind a desk. Flash back to his first episode as the Daily Show host, succeeding Craig Kilborn: January 11, 1999, Stewart with floppy, luscious black hair, twitching in a new suit ("I feel like this is my bar mitzvah ... I have a rash like you wouldn't believe.") while he interviews Michael J. Fox.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Was he leaving us now? Really? Deserting us just as the gargantuan shadow of the Trump campaign, that neo-fascist bouncy castle, began to rise wobblingly over the country? Kick out the Mexicans. Ban the Muslims. Mock the disabled. Restore America. He's saying what everybody thinks, we're told. Indeed he is: Trump isn't a demagogue; he's a one-man mob. Now, right now, was when we needed Stewart, our great perforator of mental tyrannies. Who else could pick out the semitones in the hot comic drone of the Donald's voice? Who else could puncture the ideological bloat? Who else could parse this phenomenon for us as it traveled from a joke to beyond a joke to... ?

So fine then. Go. Say goodnight, Jon Stewart, and let's have a look at the new guy. What's his name? Trevor Noah. Who? Okay, he's black, a 32-year-old comedian from South Africa, a sharp cultural operator in his own country (apparently) but a sweet naif in this one. Hell of a gamble, Comedy Central. I salute you. And at first, yes, it was pleasant to see young Trevor smiling away and deeply dimpling in the Stewart seat, the seat that had lately grown gray hairs. He was fresh and he was sleek. The show's format--the monologue delivered to the camera, then the segments with the correspondents, then the interview--was unchanged, and the writing hadn't suffered appreciably since the handover. The idea seemed to be that Noah, while coyly advertising his outsider status ("Black Friday--or, as we call it back in Africa, Friday"), would simply and smoothly channel the geist of The Daily Show.

And he was handling it, bless him, handling the material, distributing rays of easy charm. The Trump gags sounded good in that clipped, musical South African accent, and they even had a new global vibe: Trump as "the perfect African president." And that little TV blandishment that Stewart could never quite get comfortable with, the "We'll be right back" at the end of a segment? It tripped off Noah's tongue. His body language was relaxed; where the old guy had hunched over his desk, with satirical voltage crawling hairily out of his wrist-holes, the kid sat back and rode it. Triumph. Come to my arms, my beaming boy!

Slowly, though, it began to sink in: the dimension of our loss. Jon Stewart was gone--our sanity, our balance. This had of course been the 10-ton irony of his career: In nuking the news-givers, petarding the pundit class, he became one of them--became, in fact, the pundit/news-giver for a generation of viewers. As far back as 1969, Renata Adler described "that natural creator of discontinuous, lunatic constituencies, the media." In 1976, Paddy Chayefsky's Network raised this perception to the level of prophecy, with a rained-on, mad-as-hell Howard Beale heralding the age of the crank with a microphone, the Great Splintering and the end of the singular, authoritative, Cronkitic voice. In 1994, the British show The Day Today, a fake news program, parodied with surreal brutality the style of the news, the noise of the news, news itself as a production. TV news should have been impossible after The Day Today, but naturally it wasn't.

Reverence for the news, however, news-idolatry, was eroding steadily--to the point where, by 1999 and the start of Stewart's tenure on The Daily Show, the only type of news one could take seriously was the fundamentally unserious. And so satire, which appears to be hocking bogies from the margins but in fact takes its bearings from a higher authority, came blushingly to occupy the middle. There was Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire in 2004, smack in the moral center, sitting like a barbed lotus between the blah on the right (Tucker Carlson) and the blah on the left (Paul Begala), destroying them both with divine satirical perspective and insisting all the while that he was just a comedian.

Stewart was a virtuosic performer, super-nimble of tongue. His show had institutional memory--his characters (Jersey Guy, Jewish Granny) and his impressions: the mud-bubble vowels and turtle pronouncements of Mitch McConnell; the mean, back-of-the-classroom snickering of George W. Bush. Behind the news stuff there was a submerged 16-year-long standup act going on about Stewart's life, his frailty, his aging body. And how he could pounce on a guest!

Take January 24, 2012: Elizabeth Warren, who is running against the handsome pickup driver Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, is on The Daily Show. Stewart asks a question about tax cuts and Warren (click, whirr) goes into her stump speech: "I grew up in an America"--puffs of mist from the rhetorical atomizer--"that was still investing in the middle class. That was the principal function of Washington and how it spent money ... It's how kids like me, the daughter of some, you know, guy who sold fencing, ended up--" And, as Warren is about to say "as a professor," Stewart interrupts, full of faux concern: "You didn't know his name?!" It's exquisite, Warren's suddenly revealed boiled-in-the-bag folksiness, and behind that the absurd image of her father the anonymous fencing guy, who sired her and then ran off to sell more fences. There is a laugh, and then a delayed, deeper laugh as Warren slows down and finally stops. Pop goes the platitude; political speech has collapsed, and now the conversation can begin.

Trevor Noah is good; he's very good. He's never in a flap or a dither, and when he wanders (as he occasionally does) into a comedic dead spot, there's no fear in his eyes. I'm still enjoying the way his taut, spherical head and sunny personality occupy the space left by the raddled Stewart. His impression of sleepy Ben Carson-- eyes shut, head back, murmuring in a kind of intellectual narcolepsy--is tremendous. When he and correspondent Hasan Minhaj do a bit on conservative Islamophobia--" White ISIS," as they call its adherents, or "WISIS"--the fact that both men have brown skin gives the gag, and the anger behind the gag, a planetary resonance.

It took time, don't forget, lots of time, for Jon Stewart to build his persona and his audience on The Daily Show--night after night and week after week of showing up and applying himself to events, pulling his faces, delivering his lines. He wasn't always a heavyweight. Trevor Noah, currently a very able lightweight, needs time too. But he won't get any. As a culture, we're not about to nurture this talent, to give it room to grow. Our patience was exhausted long ago, by some other guy. We're going to pass judgment and move on. There's a reason Simon Cowell is so rich. Impress us today or get thee hence. So it comes to this: It's now or never, Trevor.

Photograph by JAKE CHESSUM

James Parker is an Atlantic contributing editor.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Parker, James. "Why we still miss Jon Stewart: the Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, is smooth and charming, but he has yet to find an edge that's equal to the political moment." The Atlantic, Mar. 2016, p. 34+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444596288&it=r&asid=1e035855c185b3d3c02ccb5bcd68880f. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A444596288

Noah: Daily Show must evolve
Michael Malone
145.39 (Nov. 16, 2015): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 NewBay Media LLC
http://www.nbmedia.com
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE DAILY SHOW host Trevor Noah gets back to his stand-up roots with a one-hour special, Trevor Noah: Lost in Translation, on Comedy Central Nov. 22. The special was filmed at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C. While much of his day job involves focusing a gimlet eye on the District, Noah told B&C he holds a soft spot for Washington. It's one of the first cities where he sold out a performance, he says, and always gathers a lively audience. "I've always enjoyed the diverse crowd and how open and forward-thinking the city is," Noah says.

The special was filmed live in July, and the ever-tinkering Noah is finally ready to let it go. "It's as ready as it can be," he says. "I never think a show is perfect.

There's also plenty of tinkering to be done with The Daily Show, which he took over at the end of September. It will be a "work in progress," says Noah, for a long time. "We have to find a new way to produce the same thing. It has to grow and evolve," says Noah. "To say you could do that in a month, or for anyone to expect you to have done that in a month, is ridiculous."

Noah underwent a harrowing appendectomy earlier this month, but was back at work the following day. It's a stressful job, but one he says he's able to leave behind when he heads home each night. "I sleep great," Noah says. "You may as well sleep good, because you can't do anything else while you're sleeping."

For more on Noah's special, as well as the highlight of his first six weeks hosting The Daily Show, visit broadcastingcable.com/Nov16.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Malone, Michael. "Noah: Daily Show must evolve." Broadcasting & Cable, 16 Nov. 2015, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA435355697&it=r&asid=b96e2dfdb74cffdf4ca0e33ffecb1d0d. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A435355697

Trevor Noah unwrapped: this holiday season, the new late night star has a lot to be thankful for
Jason Lynch
56.38 (Nov. 2, 2015): p18.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 e5 Global Media, LLC
http://www.adweek.com
On Sept. 28, the final piece of the recast late-night lineup clicked into place with the debut of The Daily Show With Trevor Noah. Replacing an icon like Jon Stewart after 16 years would be a daunting task for anybody, much less a relative unknown like the 31-year-old South African comedian. But Noah started strong ("Assured, handsome and with a crisp delivery, Mr. Noah was a smoother presenter than Mr. Stewart," proclaimed The New York Times), and he has improved markedly every night since.

When Stewart announced in February that he was stepping down as Daily Show host, Comedy Central offered the job to big names like Amy Schumer before settling on Noah, who started as a Daily Show contributor last December. The network is betting on Noah's long-term potential to reach millennial audiences (see sidebar), and so far, so good. While ratings have dipped versus Stewart (which Comedy Central anticipated), more than half of the show's 18-34 audience is new to the show under Noah, according to the network. Meanwhile, advertisers have stayed loyal. According to SQAD NetCosts, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah boasts the second-highest 30-second ad rates in late night, behind only The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

After wrapping his first few weeks in the chair, Noah sat with Adweek to talk about easing into his role, what he thinks about brand integrations, plus the crazy consumerism that has come to define the holidays in America and the world.

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ADWEEK: Some worried that you would completely overhaul The Daily Show, but it was clear from your first night that this was the same program that audiences knew and loved. What was behind that choice?

TREVOR NOAH: I don't consider myself the smartest person in the world, but I know that I'm not an idiot. Throwing away one of the most amazing shows on television for the sake of throwing it away makes no sense to me. Rather, it's building on that and creating a newer version of the show. It's an evolution: the next model of a car, where you still see the lineage of the car before it, but it's a newer model. That's what we're working on.

You've talked about the importance of adding diversity to the staff. One of your new correspondents, Roy Wood Jr., already seems indispensable to the show.

Diversity brings flavor into conversations, and authenticity to an argument or to a presentation of a view that is sometimes lacking. That's why I wanted Roy on the show. And then, with [the other correspondents], there are conversations you can have where I don't have to go, "I wonder what [that person] thinks?" I can just ask directly. I'm really proud of that, but it's not the end. My goal is to get more of that going in the writing room and in the building itself, and I think you'll feel that richness in the show.

You joked in the premiere about bringing a "global perspective." What has been the best example of that so far?

We were really proud of our Trump Africa piece [which compared Donald Trump to several African leaders, including former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin], I got to apply my mind and go, how do I see Trump as opposed to how is Trump perceived in the media? Everyone in the building would be furious: "Did you see what Trump said?" And I was like, "I don't think he's crazy; I just think he's a different type of personality, and he reminds me of home." A lot of the people are new to me, so it's great to come into a space with that fresh perspective.

You had a lot to worry about leading up to the premiere. What really kept you up at night?

My biggest worry was letting the people in the room down and letting Jon Stewart down. I made a joke about it in the [opening-night] monologue, but it's the truth. I wouldn't want people to think Jon is some crazy old man who as his last senile act bequeathed his show to some random homeless kid. I wouldn't want the network to look like they put their faith in the wrong person. I wouldn't want the staff to feel like they have someone who can't do their work justice. I wouldn't want my country, my continent, to feel like, "Ugh, this is our guy?"

How do you think you've done so far?

I'm extremely hard on myself. Very seldom do I walk away going, "That was great." Most nights, I get home and I go, "Ah, that's what I should have done!" But I think we can be very proud of ourselves, because as a show we have gone from people saying, "Will it be a trainwreck?" to people critiquing us as The Daily Show, saying this argument wasn't watertight and this could have been better. I take that as a compliment because before it was just, is this even going to work?

What's the toughest thing about doing a show every day?

Three things. No. 1, putting the show together every single day--having a great angle, covering the news, making it funny. The second thing is planning for the future while we're working on the present. You're doing that at the same time, and that's tough, because often creativity lives in the space of a very relaxed atmosphere. Third is, on a personal level, finding that you have to make your skin thicker and thicker every single day.

Is there anything you can tell you're already getting better at?

Everything in varying degrees. I'm more comfortable in the chair. Every day, I feel less like a visitor and more like this is my show, so I'm getting better at conveying that. I'm getting better at welcoming people into my space as viewers. I'm getting better at enjoying myself, which is a tough thing to remember to do. I'm getting better every day, and I think the show is as well, at structuring our arguments and looking at why a story didn't work as we wanted it to.

Jon Stewart told you that he's there for you if you need help. Have you reached out to him since the launch?

I've felt like doing that on most days, I'm not going to lie. In the first week, he just gave me feedback: "Great job," "Enjoy that more," "Have a good time." But I've made a point of not going to him because it will be a crutch. Necessity is the mother of invention. And if you've got Jon Stewart helping you, I don't think you'll ever invent.

You're the first millennial late-night host. What do millennials want, and how are you bringing that to late night?

I feel I'm on the old end of the spectrum, but one thing we face as millennials is the barrage of information. I struggle to sit down and just watch a show, because it's so tempting to pull my phone out. We live in a world where everything is on demand. I want a car to come where I am; Uber provided that. I need a place to stay now; Airbnb provided that. The tough thing for everyone to understand is that you have to open it up and realize that you are living in an on-demand world. Many networks still want to try and control how and when you watch shows. Those things make me so angry. What do you mean it's not available? Everything is available!

Given that, what changes are you making to the Daily Show's digital space?

We've been very active on Snapchat, and way more active on Twitter--live tweeting debates, for instance. Whereas before The Daily Show's voice was, "You'll hear us after the debate only," now we tweet you during the debate. The same thing on Instagram. We're looking at all of these spaces and going, how can we exist there and most importantly, what is our purpose there? I see brands trying to branch out into digital spaces and I go, "What are you doing there?" Some do it really well, others really don't. We've got [The Onion's former director of digital] Baratunde Thurston, who came on board and has been amazing in guiding the team in that.

We're also seeing more brand integrations, like what Colbert did with Sabra on his premiere. What's your feeling about them?

It's an interesting conversation, because advertisers are saying, "People are not watching TV in the same way anymore, so we need to be a part of the show." But a lot of them neglect to realize that to do that, you have to surrender a tiny bit of that control that you're so used to having and trust the space that you are in. You go, "Oh, but our brand wouldn't say that." Yes, but it's no longer your brand, it's an integration: half your brand, half the brand of the show that you're teaming up with. And once that synergy is achieved, then you will find an honest and very fruitful relationship. Integration can be a beautiful thing, but the advertisers need to understand the power of the show.

So you would be open to them under those circumstances?

Oh yeah, definitely. Because it's the future of television. We need to evolve. We cannot stagnate. Look at HBO. They've been really smart about evolving. And Netflix. The key is, don't be that person who holds onto it and goes, "No!"

Seeing as this is Adweek's Holiday Retail Issue, as someone relatively new to the U.S., what's your take on the over-commercialization of Christmas?

Oh, that's normal--that's all over the world. That's something that never shocked me. I've been more shocked by other things, like the fall buzz and the pumpkin spice latte buzz. I'm like, what is this thing? These are things that don't exist in most places in the world. But when it comes to Christmas and the holiday season, that's not an American thing--that is a capitalist, commercial thing.

How about Black Friday?

Oh, that's insane. I've never understood when people die [during Black Friday stampedes]. Is that top really that amazing? I've always wondered, if you bought an item on Black Friday where you were at that event where somebody died, would you still use that thing? "That's a great jacket you've got there." "Oh yes, I got it at a Black Friday sales event where a man died. They trampled him while getting to this jacket."

Is there anything else the retail industry does around the holidays that doesn't carry over internationally?

One thing that is different is the holiday shopping periods. We don't have that. Like you'll hear, "It's the Columbus Day sales event!" The what? That blows my mind.

Everyone is talking about late night and who is beating who. Are you as cognizant of what is going on with your competition as everyone else is?

No, I really am not. I watch shows that I'm a fan of, but I see television for the most part like golf: You're playing against yourself. There just happen to be other people there. I own a few restaurants back home in South Africa, and the hardest thing to understand is that a restaurant opening next door to you is good for your business. Competition is good for business, and the same thing happens for late night. The quality of late night is good for late night, so I want everyone's show to be a success. But I don't truly think you can ever master your own game, so you just keep playing and trying to get below par. I strive for my own excellence. I'm competing against myself.

RELATED ARTICLE: In with the new: how Comedy Central changed the face of late night.

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Not so long ago, Comedy Central's late-night lineup consisted of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. What a difference a year makes. "If you had told me a year and a half ago that Jon and Stephen [Colbert] would leave within 12 months of each other and we'd launch two new series in a period of nine months, I would have gone and crawled under a rook somewhere," says Michele Ganeless, the network's president. "But looking back, it seems to all make sense now."

When Colbert signed off last December as he prepared to take over The Late Show from David Letterman on CBS, Comedy Central tapped Larry Wilmore as his successor. Then in February, Stewart said he'd retire as Daily Show host by year's end.

Ganeless courted major comics like Amy Schumer and Amy Poehler before offering the hosting gig to show contributor Noah. Hiring a millennial for the job "was really important, to bring new viewers in," says Ganeless. While ratings have fallen versus Stewart--Noah's premiere week was down 37 percent in adults 18-49 from a year earlier--Comedy Central stresses that the show is No. 1 among viewers 18-24 and has doubled its African-American audience in adults 18-34. Meanwhile, consumption of the show via digital platforms has jumped to 40 percent, from 30 percent last year. "That says to us we've done something right," says the exec. "He is absolutely the right guy to take this franchise into the future."

Advertisers have bought in. "Demand never wavered, and when we sold the upfront we didn't change our pricing at all," says Jeff Lucas, head of sales and marketing at Viacom, noting that Daily Show sponsorships are sold through January and that the program will soon feature brand integrations for the first time. The Daily Show's average 30-second ad rate is $36,890, according to SQAD NetCosts, the second highest in late night.

Buyers remain bullish. The ratings dip "is simply a result of going with an unknown," says Chris Geraci, president of national broadcast at OMD. "It's going to take awhile [to rebuild that audience], but I think Trevor Noah is doing a great job. It's good to see that the show is in such good shape."--J.L.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lynch, Jason. "Trevor Noah unwrapped: this holiday season, the new late night star has a lot to be thankful for." ADWEEK, 2 Nov. 2015, p. 18+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA434320160&it=r&asid=5110b4307d070e0489e7df90f1d84327. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A434320160

Trevor Noah's dream of mass incarceration
421.33 (Oct. 9, 2015): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 e5 Global Media, LLC
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the weeks leading to Trevor Noah's Sept. 28 debut on The Daily Shaw, the comedian didn't suffer sleepless nights. Instead, the South African tells TUR he had been plagued by weird dreams. "What I dream about changes from night to night, and the most recent one was about mass incarceration. I was debating mass incarceration," he laughs before noting that taking over for Jon Stewart has resulted in "good stress." The 31-yearold comic adds: "I take my job very seriously, whether it's stand-up comedy or preparing for a TV show. Some days are all fun and some are all work, but for the most part I'm enjoying the experience."

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Trevor Noah's dream of mass incarceration." Hollywood Reporter, 9 Oct. 2015, p. 38. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA431532298&it=r&asid=a5bc8973fb0de17cbbbf339eb45cf107. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A431532298

Trevor Noah's 'Daily Show' won't be Jon Stewart's
Brian Steinberg
329.12 (Sept. 29, 2015): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Penske Business Media, LLC
http://variety.com
Jokes? Check. Funny correspondents? Check. But Trevor Noah, who tooks the reins of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" Sept. 28, will be a very different boss than Jon Stewart. As Noah enters the crowded late-night field, he'll be making some big changes in order to compete.

Variety.com/NoahDebut

Steinberg, Brian

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Steinberg, Brian. "Trevor Noah's 'Daily Show' won't be Jon Stewart's." Variety, 29 Sept. 2015, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA432064040&it=r&asid=a15a0a02e4ef5d480a25e737b302f803. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A432064040

To laugh or cry; Comedy in South Africa
416.8951 (Aug. 15, 2015): p44(US).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
http://store.eiu.com/
The rise of Rainbow-nation rib-tickling

TREVOR NOAH, the breakout star of South African comedy, does a cracking impression of a cheerily drunk Nelson Mandela. During a recent show in Johannesburg, his jokes about power outages, electric fences and a giggling, eye-rolling President Jacob Zuma ("he sounds like he's downloading his speech as he's reading it", he tweeted recently) went down a storm with the crowd. Their whooping, Mr Noah joked, was unnerving for a black man because of its similarity to a police siren.

Mr Noah, 31, who was raised in Soweto, will next month take over from Jon Stewart as host of "The Daily Show", an American satirical news programme. His new job will inevitably mean far fewer parodies involving obscure South African accents, but his countrymen will still find other sources of comic relief.

These are boom times for South African humour, with a growing number of young, talented comedians finding fresh audiences. New comedy clubs have opened, and stand-up artists (so much nicer than the stick-up variety) pack venues at casinos.

Many of the jokes focus on politics and race relations, skewering stubborn stereotypes and the otherwise unfunny legacy of apartheid. Mr Noah, who is of mixed race, jokes that he was "born a crime" and couldn't legally walk with his parents. His father would stay on the other side of the road, and "wave at me from afar like a creepy paedophile." His mother would walk with him, but if the police showed up, "she'd have to let go of me and drop me and pretend I wasn't hers ... I felt like I was a bag of weed."

Mr Noah has described himself as a "connoisseur of racism", hailing from a country where bigotry is "export quality". His willingness to talk about what couldn't be discussed in past decades has attracted in particular the emerging black middle class.

Sometimes the South African news is absurd enough to need little embellishment. Few stand-up jokes are funnier than the government's explanation for why it used taxpayers' money to build a swimming pool at Mr Zuma's private home: that it is a handy reservoir in case his house catches fire. Nor could many top the explanation for taxpayers funding an enclosure for Mr Zuma's cattle: that it is "strategically located". Some of the humourists on the public payroll could make a good living on stage.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"To laugh or cry; Comedy in South Africa." The Economist, 15 Aug. 2015, p. 44(US). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA425280944&it=r&asid=0c87a243293f6fa715784a86f91f77ee. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A425280944

Je suis Trevor' Noah comes to America
Pusch Commey
Born: February 20, 1984 in South Africa
Nationality: South African
Occupation: Comedian
.550 (May 2015): p42.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 IC Publications Ltd.
http://www.africasia.com/icpubs
By now, everyone in Africa and its diaspora has woken up to and probably moved on from the news that one of their own, the leading South African comedian and political satirist Trevor Noah, is moving to America to host The Daily Show, perhaps one of the world's most influential late-night satirical TV news shows. Pusch Commey profiles the man Africa should still be celebrating.

Last month, Trevor Noah entered a whole brave new world. Some international headlines said it all: "Trevor Noah: All the way from Soweto to the very biggest gig in comedy," screamed the UK's Independent. Social media was also ablaze with many tweets querying: "Trevor who?"

Noah, whom many western media houses decried as being "unknown globally", will be the new host of :he massively popular Daily Show, which boasts 1.5 million viewers worldwide everyday. The talented Noah will replace the Daily Show's current presenter, the iconic Jon Stewart, who has been at its helm for 16 years. He is leaving later in the year.

But for those who have followed his rise, the popular comedian's reputation for hard work is finally paying off. Since 2002, when Noah entered the world of comedy in South Africa, he would appear anywhere and any time at short notice. He would do so before an audience of one thousand or two. He would perform on street corners, in bars, in auditoriums and finally on TV. He would later make his own DVD for sale, the Daywalker. He is a young man hungry for success. He has kept performing whether everybody was watching or nobody and always loves what he does. And he does it with that unique and special African flavour.

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But his journey has not been all smooth sailing. He was born 31 years ago to a Swiss-German father, Robert Noah, and an African (Xhosa) mother, Nombuyiselo Noah (who happened to be half-Jewish). Being born of mixed heritage at a time when such mixed marriages were illegal in apartheid South Africa, Noah struggled with his identity in a country defined by race. He was raised by his mother in the black township of Soweto, and had to pretend to be an albino to explain his "strange" mixed colour, or so the story goes.

His mother had to play the role of a maid in order to enable him to visit his father in the then swanky, designated whites-only area of Hillbrow, Johannesburg.

At the age of 18 Trevor Noah started acting, and had brief roles in radio and TV soaps before trying his hands at driving a taxi (minibus) at the age of 22. He got a feel of the rough world of taxis (a violent industry, that comes with rivalries and even savage killings) when he was hijacked at gunpoint and chucked out onto the streets. It was on the streets that he would later find the lighter side of life--comedy.

Now with his big appointment, perhaps one of the most coveted roles in the world of satirical comedy, he is poised to become a multi-millionaire. According to some reports, Stewart earned in the region of $30m a year and Trevor would be all too happy if he earned half that amount.

Hot, but unfunny tweets

But perhaps unsurprisingly, controversy erupted soon after Noah's name was announced as Stewart's replacement.

For some unknown reason (maybe), someone with time to spare went hunting on Noah's Twitter thread and dug up some material dating as far back as 2009, which sent the Twitter world into a huge uproar against his appointment, claiming he was anti-Semitic and sexist. Like some old sex tapes that come back to haunt their actors, some of Noah's tweets from back then, would probably have not survived in today's increasingly politically correct world: "Behind every successful rap billionaire is a double as rich Jewish man". "Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn't look before crossing but I still felt so bad in my German car". In another he wrote: "Messi gets the ball, and the real players try to foul him, but Messi doesn't go down easy, just like Jewish chicks." He tweeted further: "Oh yeah the weekend. People gonna get drunk and think that I'm sexy--fat chicks everywhere." Another said: "A hot fat woman with ass is like a unicorn. Even if you do see one, you'll probably never get to ride one"

Youthful exuberance? Most likely. Noah's response to the uproar was interesting. He noted "to reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn't land is not a true reflection of my character, nor my evolution as a comedian."

And despite the vitriol and calls to drop his appointment, Noah will keep his job and his new employers, Comedy Central, have come to his defence: "Like many comedians, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included," Comedy Central said in their statement. "To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair. Trevor is a talented comedian with a bright future at Comedy Central."

Undoubtedly he will delight the world in a big way, as big brother Jon Stewart opined in defence of him: "My experience with him is that he is an incredibly thoughtful, considerate and funny, smart individual, and I think you give him that time, and it's going to be well worth it. I am excited for where he is going to take this thing."

However, the American Jewish Congress is not laughing, and they do not understand why Jon Stewart (Jewish), who has in the past poked fun at Jews, is handing over the reigns to Noah. They want to stop Noah.

But the Noah smear has been perplexing, especially when the perceived insult to the Prophet Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo was deemed legitimate satire, with a rallying cry, 'Je suis Charlie", in defence of freedom of speech. If the uproar against Noah continues as he heads towards taking up his new role, why shouldn't his supporters, Africans and others, cry out "Je suis Trevor" in support of his freedom of speech?

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The attitude of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) is enlightened. In a statement, May Kluk, the Chairwoman, said: "Negative stereotypes of all people are potentially offensive. However the SAJBD believes that tweets made by Noah do not constitute anti-Jewish prejudice on his part. Noah's style of humour is playful and is intended to provoke a response."

And Trevor? Well, he has taken it all with a pinch of humour. After all, his stated philosophy is: "I know how to be poor. If ever this comedy thing doesn't work out, then I've got poverty to fall back on. And I am pretty sure I'll be cool there."

Trevor brings a special African flavour to the world stage, which had hitherto been oblivious to the fact that perhaps African comedy is among the most hilarious in the world, for the cognoscenti. The industry comedy nascent in Africa has made millionaires in Nigeria, with their special and most entertaining brand of humour. In South Africa, comedy took off amongst blacks only after the demise of apartheid. A group of black comedians, including Noah, banded together at the beginning of the new millennium and upped their game on the circuit. Locally, Trevor sells impressively to massive multicultural audiences, and that is his niche. And he has poked fun at every racial group. Of mixed race, he straddles the racial spectrum, hitting at everyone, including politicians, and the president. He even mimics a drunk Nelson Mandela, to laughter. Such is the extent of his poetic licence and repertoire, that the tweets seem very tame and uninspiring, as he himself admits.

A big plus to his digging at race as well as everyone, is that he has made a huge contribution to easing racial tensions as he expresses and pokes fun at what people think but are unable to express, across the country.

It was thus a surprise that nobody complained, until his potential rise to global stardom. Trevor Noah is very active on social media. He has over 2.2 million followers on Twitter and has posted over 8,800 tweets.

It took only three guest appearances on the Daily Show by Trevor Noah to convince Comedy Central that he was their man. In these shows he delighted the audience by irreverently poking fun at American ignorance, once complaining about tired arms he had had to constantly keep up from the airport (#Handsupdontshoot), scared more of the American police than the erstwhile apartheid police.

For the past five years, Trevor has travelled Europe and America, performing to audiences everywhere with his special African brand. He got noticed when he made guest appearances on the shows of Jay Leno and David Letterman, poking fun at African-Americans.

However for a man who has survived the life-and-death shenanigans of the taxi industry in South Africa, the odds of success are heavily stacked in his favour. And it would be a big mistake to bet against him.

Commey, Pusch

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Commey, Pusch. "Je suis Trevor' Noah comes to America." New African, May 2015, p. 42+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA417021448&it=r&asid=0f276c8c8c09f36f53de44603f08cf85. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A417021448

Inception's Trevor Noah title rides the tide of fame: comedian to succeed Jon Stewart as host of "The Daily Show"
Stephanie Prange
37.7 (Apr. 6, 2015): p8.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Questex, LLC
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/
Timing is everything, and Inception Media has a particularly accurate watch.

Just as Trevor Noah is being presented as the successor to arguably the most high-profile comedy gig--host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central following the exit of Jon Stewart--Inception happens to have VOD and disc rights to his stand-up comedy title, Trevor Noah: African American.

"It's the type of thing you wait for and you hope for," said Garrett Lee, EVP of product development at Inception. "I feel lucky that we have him and committed to him.

"Three performances on 'The Daily Show,' and now he's host! He's stepping into one of the biggest shows in comedy."

Noah, known internationally, is not so well known stateside, but his profile in America shot into the stratosphere last week when he nabbed one of the top jobs in TV.

"A lot of people are scratching their heads, 'Who is this guy?'" Lee noted.

As he stepped into the spotlight, jokes from the comic that some found controversial surfaced, adding to the swirl of publicity around the previously low-profile talent.

Lee first saw Noah off-Broadway in 2013 and liked what he saw. With partner Levity Entertainment and its executive Judi Brown-Marmel, Inception nabbed the stand-up title from the young comic.

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"I have it because I really like the guy," Lee said. "It's great when it happens, but initially you have to believe in the comedian."

Lee also experienced perfect timing at his former company, Image Entertainment, when he picked up Daniel Tosh: Completely Serious before the comic's popular show "Tosh.0" debuted. He also got a title from Jeff Dunham before the ventriloquist shot to greater fame.

According to Lee, Noah's star has just begun its ascendance. Those who have seen him have compared him to Eddie Murphy, Lee said.

"He can do accents; there's so much in one person," Lee said. "He's really big in the United Kingdom and internationally. I think what Trevor is going to bring to 'The Daily Show' is that he's so international that maybe the show will become more international."

BY STEPHANIE PRANGE

Prange, Stephanie

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Prange, Stephanie. "Inception's Trevor Noah title rides the tide of fame: comedian to succeed Jon Stewart as host of 'The Daily Show'." Home Media Magazine, 6 Apr. 2015, p. 8. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA409238548&it=r&asid=14045118ff2ecf42fbc292394352496f. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A409238548

South Africa's fresh face of comedy
Marcia Amidon Lusted
28.7 (Apr. 2012): p20.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Cricket Media
http://www.cricketmedia.com/
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

OKAY, SO WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA, comedy is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. But if you are South African, then you probably already know about Trevor Noah, a popular young comedian who is not only South African, but also builds his comedy around what it's like to live in his country.

Noah is one of a new group of comedians in South Africa who are using comedy as a way to deal with more serious issues in their country, such as apartheid, race relations, crime, biracial families, and social standing. But it's not all serious, since Noah also uses things like the harsh geography of South Africa, the ups and downs of cell phone coverage there, and even the personality traits of famous people as fuel for his jokes. Noah is also fluent in six of the 11 languages spoken in his country, so he can speak to many South Africans directly. Because much of his humor is directly related to what it's like to live in South Africa. Noah isn't yet well known in the rest of the world. Yet his popularity as a stand-up comic in comedy clubs has already led to television appearances and even a movie version of his solo comedy show called The Daywalker, which has been shown in theaters all over South Africa.

Noah admits that he was always in trouble in school when he was a kid, for the same kinds of humor that have now become his career. "I think now when you say it's your job, they don't give you flak," he says of the reactions of people to his comedy. "I should have thought of that at the time [when I was in school]." He adds that when he runs into his former teachers today, he says to them, "Told you so." Noah names American comedian Eddie Murphy as his all-time favorite comic hero.

Noah has held several other jobs in addition to being a comic, such as actor on a South African soap opera, television presenter, and radio DJ. When asked how he got his start as a stand-up comedian, Noah says, "My friends decided that I should be one. I was at a club watching comedy--my first time watching--and my friends convinced me to go do an open spot. I just spoke and it went well--I felt at home on the stage. I started doing it everywhere. It was a hobby--I never thought comedy would be my job. I really love doing it--I'd do it for free, but don't tell anyone." When asked about his hobbies, he says, "I love sports, I watch TV, I play videogames. [But] I spend a lot of my time on comedy so I get to do my hobby as a job."

Noah has hosted several South African comedy festivals and appeared in several comedy shows, and finally began performing in the United States and Great Britain. And while he admits that he has to change parts of his show so that it's funny for a non-South African audience, many parts of his routine work anywhere. Noah admits that he simply tells stories from a South African's point of view. "At the end of the day it's a conversation, you know? People are people, so ... I really just try and have a conversation with the audience and try and just get the message across. Because no matter where you are in the world, we're all people and there's a common ground we all share. I think it goes beyond culture or race or gender. There are certain things we can all relate to. We're living in a global village." He does remember his first performance in a comedy club in the United Kingdom, when he mentioned a certain soccer team in a place that supported a rival team. "The booing that ensued was just horrible. Horrible and traumatic. But it made me a stronger person."

Trevor Noah has plans for a late-night television show of his own, as well as perhaps recording another one of his live shows as a movie. But he knows he will always rely on stand-up comedy as the basis of his career. He says, "You're a comic ... because you don't view the world the way that everyone else does. You live in this world that you think is extremely crazy, while everyone acts like it's normal." And that, in the end, is what makes Noah's comedy about more than just South Africa and life there.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Lusted, Marcia Amidon

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lusted, Marcia Amidon. "South Africa's fresh face of comedy." Faces: People, Places, and Cultures, Apr. 2012, p. 20+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA294628796&it=r&asid=9132b33d769b93812f63b3373fa94602. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A294628796

Soweto's stand-up son
Jesse Lichtenstein
159.26 (June 25, 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Newsweek LLC. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of the publisher is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com
http://www.newsweek.com/
Byline: Jesse Lichtenstein

Can Trevor Noah's comedy cross the Atlantic?

When the young South African comedian Trevor Noah took the stage on The Tonight Show earlier this year to deliver a five-minute set, Jay Leno and guest Glenn Close could be seen roaring in the background, echoing the studio audience that was eating out of Noah's hand. It was a big moment: for the first time, an African comedian had taken the mic on stand-up comedy's biggest traditional showcase, and he'd killed. Back home, sub-Saharan newspapers trumpeted Noah's appearance as if it were breaking news, and MSNBC Africa rebroadcast the show across the continent.

Noah--just 28, handsome, thoughtful, and very funny--is already a huge deal in South Africa. In a few short years, he's risen from amateur clubs to being a headliner capable of selling out large theaters for his one-man shows. All this, in a nation where stand-up comedy is still a maturing art. Noah's DVDs are bestsellers, and he's already had a run as a talk-show host. When a clip of his routine ridiculing South Africa's abysmal phone service went up on YouTube, the CEO of a local mobile provider took out a full-page ad in Jo'burg's Sunday Times to apologize to Noah directly--and then hired him as a pitchman.

Not that Noah always sticks to What's-with-cellphones-these-days? material. His comedy is political, trenchant, delivered in an easy style that probes sensitive subject matter without being overtly confrontational. This is perhaps what's made him so appealing despite South Africa's fraught racial landscape, which is often more complicated and rawer than America's own. "I'm always fascinated by the way we treat race everywhere," Noah says. "I've always seen race from different points of view, just because of my upbringing."

Noah was born to a black mother and a white father 10 years before apartheid ended. ("I was born a crime," he said on Leno.) When he was little, his mother walked ahead of him and pretended not to know him if she saw the police ("I felt like a bag of weed,"), while his father, he says, walked on the other side of the street, waving to him "like a creepy pedophile." Noah's comedy emerges from his layered outsider status: mixed race--not black nor white nor Indian nor "Coloured" (the official apartheid ethnic category made up of the mixed descendants of the Dutch, British, Malay, Indonesian, and native Africans). The title of Noah's one-man show, The Daywalker, refers to a fib his family employed to explain his light skin to the rest of his Soweto township: he was albino, but an unusual one--an albino who didn't have to worry about a sunburn.

South Africa's tangled social, ethnic, and tribal categories are a rich vein of comedic material. As yet, the nation hasn't produced a breakout global stand-up star, but Noah's insights into group mentality make him a strong candidate to be the first comic to make the leap. He speaks five languages and moves seamlessly from impersonating a Russian spy-movie villain to a novice Indian mugger to a Coloured fisherman. He parrots township dwellers, Afrikaner yuppies, and inner-city African-American schoolchildren. A favorite bit has him impersonating President Jacob Zuma as the leader slowly trawls through Facebook, trying to find and friend Barack Obama.

Noah's expanding cast of characters gives him access to a range of audiences that few other comics can match. But he's not just a serial impressionist--he's more a cultural chameleon who has learned to mine his surroundings as much for survival and human connection as for comedy. "I grew up in such a mixed family," he says. To communicate with his grandparents, or his aunts and uncles, "you'd have to change your voice--you had to speak with a certain accent, otherwise people would not understand one word of what you were saying."

Indeed, it's Noah's fearlessness in tackling the tricky issues of racial identity that makes him so accessible to American viewers. After all, comedy can sometimes seem like the only public space where Americans can speak honestly about their experiences of race and ethnicity--where the likes of Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Dave Chappelle, Wanda Sykes, and Margaret Cho force us to acknowledge biases we may have grown weary of but haven't resolved. The last section of Noah's Tonight Show set focused on his fascination, as an African, with African-American speech patterns. Some commentators found the bit hilarious; others found it made them uncomfortable.

Last summer Noah moved to Southern California. "I've always wanted to be a comedian in the world," Noah says. "I don't want to be labeled a South African comedian." Yet as another South African comedian, John Vlismas, pointed out, while Noah's rapid ascent has provoked some resentment among a few of his peers, Noah's turn on Leno and his attempt to make it in America are "such a big deal for all of us--for South African comedy. In fact, it could even create a new image in American minds about the level of sophistication South Africans have in general."

In the meantime, Noah has been honing his craft on the road, putting in the miles and gathering new material for a Comedy Central special and a big live show produced by Eddie Izzard. Not surprisingly the realities of race in the U.S. have made a deep impression on him. "We have a very common history," he says. "I very immediately understand a lot of things happening out here. It's very similar to back home--there's still the black club, the white club, the Latino club, the black restaurant."

Touring with Latino comedian Gabriel Iglesias has also been instructive for Noah. "I've performed to people in hunting jackets in the middle of the South that are coming to his shows. He shows me that it doesn't really matter what you look like or where you come from; funny is funny. You can find your audience regardless of who they are, and who you are."

Jesse Lichtenstein is a freelance journalist who has written for The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and Tin House.

By Jesse Lichtenstein

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lichtenstein, Jesse. "Soweto's stand-up son." Newsweek International, 25 June 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA293666036&it=r&asid=f6243f3ee25453c457f5366b84a29bf0. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A293666036

Comedian and actor Trevor Noah
417.38 (Oct. 28, 2011): p22.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 e5 Global Media, LLC
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
Comedian and actor Trevor Noah, whose career in post-apartheid South Africa is the subject of the documentary Township to the Stage, has signed with CAA.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Comedian and actor Trevor Noah." Hollywood Reporter, 28 Oct. 2011, p. 22. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA271405717&it=r&asid=56552826e36ceccc3533489e87792d32. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A271405717

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
LaVonne Neff
134.10 (May 10, 2017): p53.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

By Trevor Noah

Spiegel & Grau, 304 pp., $28.00

At least one good thing has come out of recent political events: a flood of films and books reflecting the experiences of people of color. When the presidential campaigns began, Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me topped the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. Soon after the inauguration, Moonlight won the Oscar for best picture. Many other straight-talking books (like Just Mercy, The Underground Railroad, and Homegoing) and hard-hitting movies (Fences, The Birth of a Nation, and 13th) have also attracted large audiences. Most are deeply troubling. A few are inspirational. Trevor Noah's memoir is both.

Published a week after the election, this collection of 18 stories provides a welcome break from the angst that has settled over much of America since then. Noah is not an American, but he knows race. Born in South Africa to a white Swiss-German father and a black Xhosa mother when his very existence broke the law against interracial coupling, he did not fit any of his country's legally mandated racial categories. His black cousins considered him white. White kids thought he was colored. Colored kids spoke a different language. And he obviously wasn't Indian. "I was the anomaly wherever we lived," he writes. But he was philosophical about his outsider status. "I learned that even though I didn't belong to one group, I could be a part of any group that was laughing."

Fortunately, Noah is good at making people laugh. Within a few years of finishing high school, he had become one of South Africa's top comedians. By age 30 he was making regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which soon became The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. The boy who spent his earliest years in his grandmother's two-room house in Soweto with "just one communal outdoor tap and one outdoor toilet shared by six or seven houses" has come a long way. According to the Wall Street Journal, Noah, now 33, recently bought a 3,600-square-foot, $10 million Manhattan apartment with three and a half baths.

He doesn't mention his adult achievements in Born a Crime, however. His humor is mostly self-deprecating--"I was the acne-ridden clown with duck feet in floppy shoes," he writes--and his stories end before his career begins. Rather than a rags-to-riches success story, the book is a memoir about survival against the heavy odds of racism, poverty, hunger, and abuse.

How did he survive? And why is the book so cheerful? In a word. Mom. "I thought that I was the hero of my story," Noah told NPR's Terry Gross, but "in writing it I came to realize over time that my mom was the hero. I was lucky enough to be in the shadow of a giant."

Mom, aka Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, was partly raised by an aunt along with 14 cousins who were unwanted by their parents. By the age of six or seven, she was collecting deposits on empty liquor bottles so she could buy food for neighborhood toddlers who were worse off than she was. After learning English at a mission school, she took a secretarial course and then moved to a whites-only section of Johannesburg, where prostitutes taught her how to avoid police detection. She chose her best friend, a white man, to be Trevor's father, knowing full well that she could be imprisoned for giving birth to a light-skinned child.

Noah's stories about his mother are often funny but never sentimental. "I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car," one begins. When Trevor, age ten, stole a pack of batteries. Mom said to the security guard, "Take him to jail!" (The guard, dumbfounded, didn't.) "If I don't punish you, the world will punish you even worse," she told her son. "The police don't love you. When I beat you, I'm trying to save you. When they beat you, they're trying to kill you."

At times Patricia economized on petrol by making an embarrassed Trevor push their old car up hills and saved money on food by serving the family wild spinach and caterpillars. At the same time, she readily bought books to share with him. "She taught me to challenge authority and question the system," he writes. "The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her." I laughed out loud at Noah's descriptions of his mother's "faith-based obstinacy," forcing him to attend religious meetings most weeknights and three times on Sunday. It wasn't all bad. "Christian karaoke, badass action stories, and violent faith healers--man, I loved church," he admits.

But wait--how can we laugh at stories whose setting is apartheid and the tumultuous years following its demise, a time when "very little white blood was spilled [but] black blood ran in the streets"? Steve Allen, host of The Tonight Show in the 1950s, once wrote that "tragedy plus time equals comedy." Noah is funny because, from the distance of a couple of decades, he can see humanity in all its quirky glory, even in the midst of dire oppression.

Still, one of Noah's stories is dead serious. When he was in elementary school, his mother married a charming auto mechanic. Abel, it turned out, was mean when drunk, and he was drunk much of the time. He viciously beat up a neighbor kid. He struck Trevor. He drank up Patricia's savings and periodically battered her. She complained to the police, but the police refused to file reports. Eventually Abel tried to kill her.

Noah could find no humor in this event--but his indomitable mother could. When she awoke in intensive care, Trevor, sitting by her hospital bed, was weeping uncontrollably. "My child," she said, "you must look on the bright side." "What?" Trevor exclaimed. "Mom, you were shot in the face. There is no bright side." "Of course there is," she responded. "Now you're officially the best-looking person in the family."

Reviewed by LaVonne Neff, who blogs and reviews books at lively dust, blogspot.com.

Neff, LaVonne

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Neff, LaVonne. "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood." The Christian Century, vol. 134, no. 10, 2017, p. 53. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA495475698&it=r&asid=ba133518752618e3f37da4871c0ea9e1. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A495475698

'Born a Crime': A Book for the Summer
(June 20, 2017): p1.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Uloop Inc.
http://uwire.com/?s=UWIRE+Text&x=26&y=14&=Go
Byline: Sabina Dirienzo

"IMMORALITY ACT, 1927: To prohibit illicit carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives..." begins Trevor Noah's 2016 memoir, "Born a Crime."

Noah, a comedian and the current host of "The Daily Show," was born illegally. The Immorality Act he includes at the very start of his memoir made his being born a crime; Noah's mother is a black South African woman and his father is a white Swiss man. Apartheid was the system of government in South Africa until 1991. It legally separated the racial and ethnic groups of South Africa and concentrated wealth, power and desirable jobs in the hands of white South Africans. Noah describes South Africa post-apartheid as being "at war with itself"' because of this.

"Born a Crime" includes handy explanations of systems of Apartheid that continue to impact South Africa even after Apartheid fell, such as the separate neighborhoods for specific races.

It's far from being a textbook, though. Noah's work is mostly funny. The tone of "The Daily Show" translates to his memoir, especially when he's describing situations that could be quite dark in the hands of a different author. This does create a bit of an emotional distance between the reader and the darker moments, but it worked for me. When Noah wanted a chapter to be sad, it was successful, it's just that that wasn't usually his intention.

He also mixes in segments with entirely different tones. The chapter where Noah discovers that his stepfather has serious anger issues is followed immediately by a chapter that includes the sentence, "I understood Valentine's Day, as a concept. The naked baby shoots you with an arrow and you fall in love."

The broadest re-occurring theme of "Born a Crime," and what I believe held the book together, is Noah's relationship with his mother. She's a strong character throughout the book and the person you learn the most about other than Noah. Their relationship anchors the first and last chapters, and most of the middle.

Although I enjoyed this book, I didn't read it particularly quickly. It's a clever book and it's very different from many memoirs out there. I learned about the author's life, but I also learned little details about an entirely different culture that the average reader wouldn't encounter in their everyday life.

The chapters of the book are mostly unconnected and frequently function more like short stories than chapters. While there are broad recurring details, you could probably read them out of order without it being too much of a problem, and you can take large breaks in reading and still understand what's happening. The disconnected nature of the pieces didn't bother me, but it may not be your vibe.

"Born a Crime" could probably make for a good beach read; with the exception of a few chapters, it's a fun book.

Ultimately I'd give "Born a Crime" a four out of five. It's very different from most memoirs I've read because of its content. Trevor Noah works very hard to describe life in South Africa without being boring or sounding like a textbook, and "Born a Crime" works.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"'Born a Crime': A Book for the Summer." UWIRE Text, 20 June 2017, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA496023960&it=r&asid=7f70f6b0a84521406ec14935ef414bc7. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A496023960

Trevor Noah casts revealing light on apartheid
Gene Seymour
(Nov. 15, 2016): Lifestyle: p05B.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Byline: Gene Seymour, Special for USA TODAY

Some readers may be thrown a little by the title of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Spiegel & Grau, 304 pp., ***1/2 out of four).

But when The Daily Show host explains what it means, an alternate universe -- at once distant and yet uncomfortably close to home -- opens up before your eyes: a world where the absurdity of race is institutionalized into authoritarian rule.

For Noah was born 32 years ago in a South Africa under the rigidly, often brutally enforced system of apartheid, the son of a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother. As Noah writes: "In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn't merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. a Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke a race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason."

And so, Noah continues, "where most children are proof of their parents' love, I was the proof of their criminality."

Apartheid was by then in its waning days and would be voted away in 1994. But as Noah came of age in Soweto as a light-skinned mixed-race person, he still had to negotiate his way through nettlesome, often cruelly patrolled barriers of caste and color. "You were what the government said you were," Noah writes.

There was even a test by the government for those who were applying for "white" status in which a pencil went into your hair. "If it fell out, you were white. If it stayed on, you were colored."

If this sounds absurd at best, barbaric at worst, consider that such distinctions determined where you were allowed to live, with whom you were allowed to work or socialize, and how much money you could make.

Matters weren't much better after apartheid ended when Noah was 10. With black people now in charge, Noah was still considered more "colored" than "black." "You could imagine," he writes, "how weird it was for me" to be "mixed, but not colored -- colored by complexion, but not by culture."

It is hard to imagine. But what makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism from darker-skinned children in his township, making his outsider status work for him among the jocks, nerds and party people.

The mental agility Noah displays in his social transactions, whether in being able to converse with different tribes in their own language or hustle bootleg compact discs as an older teen in at-risk neighborhoods, makes it easy to understand how he became a quick-witted, sophisticated stand-up comic and talk-show host.

What also helped was having a mother like Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, who in many ways is Born a Crime's most heroic figure. While Noah's white father, Robert, was a distant, though still caring, figure in his life, his mother administered "old-school, Old Testament discipline," broadening his horizons while also compelling him to understand the world's harsher aspects.

In a shocking turn of events, Noah, who moved to the USA last year, has a chance to repay his enormous debt to her tough love. Consider Born a Crime another such gift to her -- and an enormous gift to the rest of us.

CAPTION(S):

photo Evan Agostini, Invision/AP

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Seymour, Gene. "Trevor Noah casts revealing light on apartheid." USA Today, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 05B. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470413494&it=r&asid=9b890c718bd321e49877796b40896961. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A470413494

A Biracial Boyhood Under Apartheid
Michiko Kakutani
(Nov. 29, 2016): Arts and Entertainment: pC1(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
As host of ''The Daily Show,'' Trevor Noah comes across as a wry, startled and sometimes outraged outsider, commenting on the absurdities of American life. During the presidential campaign, the South African-born comic remarked that Donald J. Trump reminded him of an African dictator, mused over the mystifying complexities of the Electoral College system and pointed out the weirdness of states voting on recreational marijuana.

In the countdown to and aftermath of the election, Mr. Noah has grown more comfortable at moving back and forth between jokes and earnest insights, between humor and serious asides -- the way he's done in his stand-up act, and now, in his compelling new memoir, ''Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood.''

By turns alarming, sad and funny, his book provides a harrowing look, through the prism of Mr. Noah's family, at life in South Africa under apartheid and the country's lurching entry into a postapartheid era in the 1990s. Some stories will be familiar to fans who have followed the author's stand-up act. But his accounts here are less the polished anecdotes of a comedian underscoring the absurdities of life under apartheid, than raw, deeply personal reminiscences about being ''half-white, half-black'' in a country where his birth ''violated any number of laws, statutes and regulations.''

The son of a Xhosa mother and a Swiss-German father, Mr. Noah recalls that ''the only time I could be with my father was indoors'': ''If we left the house, he'd have to walk across the street from us.'' It was dangerous, as a light-skinned child, to be seen with his mother as well: ''She would hold my hand or carry me, but if the police showed up she would have to drop me and pretend I wasn't hers.''

He spent much of his time at home: ''I didn't have any friends. I didn't know any kids besides my cousins. I wasn't a lonely kid -- I was good at being alone. I'd read books, play with the toy that I had, make up imaginary worlds. I lived inside my head. To this day you can leave me alone for hours and I'm perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have to remember to be with people.''

Language, he discovered early on, was a way to camouflage his difference. His mother knew Xhosa, Zulu, German, Afrikaans, Sotho and used her knowledge ''to cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate the world.'' She made sure that English was the first language her son spoke because ''if you're black in South Africa, speaking English is the one thing that can give you a leg up.''

''English is the language of money,'' Mr. Noah goes on. ''English comprehension is equated with intelligence. If you're looking for a job, English is the difference between getting the job or staying unemployed.''

A gifted mimic, Trevor learned to become ''a chameleon,'' using language to gain acceptance in school and on the streets. ''If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu,'' he writes. ''If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.''

Mr. Noah offers a series of sharp-edged snapshots of life in the township of Soweto, where his maternal grandmother lived, and where, he recalls, ''99.9 percent'' of the residents were black, and his light skin made him a neighborhood curiosity. He remembers: ''The township was in a constant state of insurrection; someone was always marching or protesting somewhere and had to be suppressed. Playing in my grandmother's house, I'd hear gunshots, screams, tear gas being fired into crowds.''

To save money, Mr. Noah recalls, his mother perfected the art of coasting their old, rusty Volkswagen downhill ''between work and school, between school and home,'' and enlisting her son's help in pushing the car when the gas ran out. One month, he says, money was so short that they were forced to subsist on bowls of wild spinach, cooked with mopane worms, ''the cheapest thing that only the poorest of poor people eat.''

By high school, Mr. Noah writes, he had become an enterprising businessman, copying and selling pirated CDs; he and his business partners would soon segue into the D.J. business, throwing raucous dance parties in Alexandra, ''a tiny, dense pocket of a shantytown,'' known as Gomorrah because it had ''the wildest parties and the worst crimes.''

After Mr. Noah's father moved to Cape Town, his mother married an auto mechanic, whose English name, Abel, recalled the good brother in the Bible, but whose Tsonga name, Ngisaveni, says Mr. Noah, meant ''Be afraid.'' Those names would turn out to be a harbinger of his stepfather's dual personality -- charming and eager to be liked on the surface, but, as Mr. Noah recalls, highly controlling, and capable of violence.

In the end, ''Born a Crime'' is not just an unnerving account of growing up in South Africa under apartheid, but a love letter to the author's remarkable mother, who grew up in a hut with 14 cousins, and determined that her son would not grow up paying what she called ''the black tax'' -- black families having to ''spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past,'' using their skills and education to bring their relatives ''back up to zero,'' because ''the generations who came before you have been pillaged.''

It's the story of a fiercely religious woman, who attributes her miraculous survival from a gunshot wound to the head (inflicted by Abel) to her faith; a woman who took her son to three churches on Sunday (as well as a prayer meeting on Tuesday, Bible study on Wednesday and youth church on Thursday), even when there were dangerous riots in the streets and few dared to venture out of their homes.

The names chosen for Xhosa children traditionally have meanings, Mr. Noah observes: His mother's name, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, means ''She Who Gives Back''; his cousin's name, Mlungisi, means ''The Fixer.'' His mother, Mr. Noah writes, deliberately gave him a name, Trevor, with ''no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family.''

''It's not even a biblical name,'' he writes. ''It's just a name. My mother wanted her child beholden to no fate. She wanted me to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.''

Born a Crime

Stories From a South African Childhood

By Trevor Noah

288 pages. Spiegel & Grau. $28.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTOS: PHOTO (C1); Trevor Noah on the set of ''The Daily Show,'' in 2015. In his memoir, he offers a series of sharp-edged snapshots of life in the township of Soweto, where his maternal grandmother lived. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PIOTR REDLINSKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES); Trevor Noah, at 3, with his mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PATRICIA NOAH) (C5)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kakutani, Michiko. "A Biracial Boyhood Under Apartheid." New York Times, 29 Nov. 2016, p. C1(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471961774&it=r&asid=e698446adc9407c6b049cbbc1ad3c30f. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A471961774

Trevor Noah Says He Grew Up 'In The Shadow Of A Giant' (His Mom)
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HOST: TERRY GROSS

TERRY GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Trevor Noah the host of "The Daily Show." He took over the show last year after the departure of Jon Stewart. Now Noah has a new memoir called "Born A Crime," and he literally was. He's South African, the son of a black mother and white father. When Noah was born in 1984 during the apartheid era, it was illegal for a black person and a white person to have sexual relations. As you can imagine, this led to complications for Noah and for his mother who he lived with. Trevor Noah traveled the world doing stand-up comedy before hosting "The Daily Show." Trevor Noah, welcome to FRESH AIR.

TREVOR NOAH: Thank you so much for having me.

GROSS: Does Donald Trump's election change at all how you see the role of "The Daily Show?"

NOAH: I think it does because if you think of where "The Daily Show" was when I inherited it from Jon Stewart, I was in a space where essentially everything seemed like it was on track. You know, in terms of - from a progressive point of view, you know, you're looking at Republicans who, yes, were in control of many facets of government, but at the same time, you had Barack Obama as a president. You had Hillary Clinton on track, all the Democrats looking good. And, you know, Donald Trump was just an entertaining buffoon to watch. And over time, you came to realize that Donald Trump was appealing to a lot of people with his populist message. And, slowly, I think even as a show, we started shifting in tone as the election started shifting.

GROSS: Are you concerned about Donald Trump's statement that he's going to tighten the libel laws? Now, you're satire, and satire is protected as long as it's clearly satire.

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: And people wouldn't confuse it with fact. And I think your show is clearly a satirical program.

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: Nevertheless, are you concerned that there might be any effort to prevent you doing what you're doing?

NOAH: I don't know. I don't think I, myself, am personally afraid. I do worry for the press, though, because Donald Trump has shown himself to be extremely thin-skinned. He does not take criticism well, nor does he appreciate reporting on his life. So if he says that if he wins, he's going to, you know, dismantle the libel laws and come off to the newspapers, I feel like we should take him at his word. This is the same man who has been writing letters to people who he's, you know, bared a grudge against for 20 years. So if Donald Trump says that, I don't know why you wouldn't want to believe him.

GROSS: I'm wondering if you've been getting any extremist racist tweets or emails directed at you because of the satire that you do about Trump?

NOAH: Oh, yeah. But, I mean, that's just Twitter.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Business as usual.

NOAH: Yeah. That was there before the show. I wouldn't - you know, I wouldn't say in my will that that came specifically from Donald Trump. You know, Twitter is a place where there is extreme vitriol at all times, so I would be lying if I said I noticed a difference. I will say this, though, one of the people from my online team said he didn't notice - almost immediately after the Trump victory within the following days, he noticed that there was a severe spike in hateful messages that were coming towards me.

GROSS: Did you face anything like that in South Africa?

NOAH: Well, we have a fair amount of racism. You know, I grew up in a country that...

GROSS: I don't mean when you were growing up (laughter).

NOAH: Oh, you mean on Twitter?

GROSS: Yeah. I mean, like when you were doing comedy.

NOAH: Oh, no, not really. Not really actually. No that was something - I had some people who disagreed with me here or there, but nothing as strong as I've received, you know, coming to America.

GROSS: It's interesting because you grew up in an area where the races were legally separated.

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: You come to democratic America, and that's when the real hate starts coming at you.

NOAH: Yeah (laughter). That is the irony of life, so I guess - I always tell people - I go I feel like in a strange way, I'm home. You know, this doesn't shock me. This is just - I've come a long way to be in a place that is extremely familiar to me.

GROSS: Your book is called "Born A Crime" because you are officially the product of a crime. Your mother is black, and your father is white - part Swiss, part German. And your book opens with the law - with a word-for-word version of the law that made that relationship illegal.

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: It's the reason why your book is called "Born A Crime." I want you to actually read the wording of this 1927 South African law.

NOAH: So this is the Immorality Act of 1927 (reading) to prohibit illicit carnal intercourse between Europeans and natives and other acts in relation thereto. Be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, the Senate and the House of Assembly of the Union of South Africa as follows. Point number one - any European male who has illicit carnal intercourse with a native female and any native male who has illicit carnal intercourse with a European female shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years. Any native female who permits any European male to have illicit carnal intercourse with her and any European female who permits any native male to have illicit carnal intercourse with her shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding four years.

GROSS: How old were you when you first heard about this law?

NOAH: I don't even remember hearing about it. I just knew about it. I was born into it, so I don't remember my parents ever saying it to me. I don't remember a conversation ever being had around this. I just knew this to be the law because that's what I was growing up in during that time in South Africa.

GROSS: So how aware were you growing up that you were the product of a crime and if people saw you, they might realize that your mother was officially guilty?

NOAH: I wasn't aware at all, and I was really lucky that I wasn't aware because I think that would have changed my childhood and my view on the world drastically. You know, I existed in a space where my mother was a black woman and my father was a white man. And that's how I saw the world. I was just like, you know, some dads are whites and some moms are black. And that's how it is.

GROSS: But that's not how it was in South Africa.

NOAH: Definitely, yeah.

GROSS: So how were you protected so that you were able to see yourself and your parents that way?

NOAH: Well, it was just how my parents treated me. It was the world they decided to show me. I was really sheltered. My grandmother kept me locked in the house when I was staying, you know, with the family and so-and-so. And every household, for instance, had to have a registry of everyone who lived in that house. And so the police would check in on you randomly, and they would come into the house, and they would look through that registry and look at all the names of all the people who were registered to be living in the house. And they would, you know, cross-reference that with the actual inhabitants of the dwelling.

And I was never on that piece of paper. I was always hidden. My grandmother would hide me somewhere if the police did show up. And it was a constant game of hide and seek. But I didn't know why anything was happening. You're a child. If you're told to go to the bedroom, and, you know, go under the bed, then you go under the bed. But you don't - I never saw it as a fearful moment. I never saw it as something that was governing my life because I was so young that I didn't ask questions.

GROSS: The way you describe it in your book, your mother and your father were friends. And she saw him in a way as her protector because she was in a world that was predominantly white at the time, and they would kind of go to places that were like underground so that you could kind of be black and white together and - no?

NOAH: Well, no, she didn't see him as a protector, but rather what happened was I guess - that was more on a personal side. So my mom liked the fact that my dad was distant, and that's what I talk about in the book so she didn't feel that she was unsafe with him as a person. With regards to the underground spaces, those were the places where many people mixed if they wanted to mix which was against the law. My mother was part of that group. My father was part of that group. People who were black and whites and Indian and Asian and you came together and said we choose to mix at the risk of being arrested. And so they did.

GROSS: So how was the law enforced? Like if - were people supposed to be snitching on your parents?

NOAH: Yes. That's predominantly the way it works.

GROSS: Were they - people were encouraged to snitch.

NOAH: People were encouraged to snitch. It was a police state, so there were police everywhere. There were undercover police. There were uniformed police. The state was being surveilled the entire time. You know, communications were monitored, and anyone could snitch. You know, it could be your neighbor if you were living in a white area. It could be your neighbor if you were living in a black area.

A lot of black people worked with the police as snitches. We used to call them bimpees (ph) where I grew up. And, you know, they were afforded special privileges. They may have been paid by the police, but you never knew who was informing on you. We lived either next door to or two doors away from us was a known informant in Soweto. And this was a black man, and, you know, he was working with the apartheid police to help curtail any resistance that may arise.

GROSS: So I'm wondering, given the climate that you grew up with where snitching was encouraged, where the relationship your parents had was illegal, where black people in the townships had to register, they had to carry IDs, when you hear about the possibility of Muslims having to register under the Trump administration, what do you think about?

NOAH: I think it's - I think it's despicable. I also think it's frightening that we seem to live through history over and over again. And I don't know if I'm the only one. I feel like when you read through history books, you always judge those people in that time. You always go, how could they let that happen? How did that come to be? And then you hear whisperings of that in the time that we live in.

And I always say to people, you know - someone goes, oh, well, what are you going to do about terrorist attacks and Muslims? We got to do something, and I go, don't let those in power trick you out of your freedoms by using your fear, you know? It's the reason the United States fell into the Patriot Act because they were reacting. We all do that as human beings, you know? It's what my mom would call shopping on an empty stomach. You're going to buy food that you shouldn't because at the time you are reacting to your hunger.

And people should always be wary of that because the precedent is set, and it's so much easier to build on a foundation than it is something that doesn't exist. So you see it as something that's happening to people that are not you and then it expands and it expands further. And then one day you're on a registry.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." He has a new memoir called "Born A Crime." We're going to take a short break here and then we'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." He has a new memoir called "Born A Crime." And getting back to your family, your mother was arrested several times during your childhood...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...During apartheid because of her relationship with your father because they had carnal sexual intercourse...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...And (laughter) you were the product of that. So how much time would you estimate she actually spent in prison?

NOAH: I was really lucky in that my mom and dad never got caught in the act, so to speak. So my mom was caught fraternizing with my dad. My mom was caught, you know, in the building that my father lived in. My mom was caught in a white neighborhood past curfew without the right permits. My mother was caught in transition, and that was key because had she been caught in the act, then, as the law says, she could have spent anywhere up to four years in prison.

So on and off my mom would spend a week in jail. She would spend a day in jail here, a week again, a week and a half, two weeks. My grandmother tells me stories of how, you know, because I would be at the house I wouldn't notice that my mom was gone because she would be at work sometimes. So it was just like time when my mom would be gone and my grandma would tell me she'll be back. And nobody knew where anybody was.

The police didn't afford you a phone call. You just disappeared for a while. And what was scary was we lived in a state where some people disappeared forever. You know, if the police believed that they were planning any form of resistance against the state, then you were just gone. Nobody knew where you were, and you just hoped to see that family member again.

GROSS: I found it interesting that there were black people who also hated your mother for having relations with a white man. You tell a story about being in a minibus, which basically functioned like a taxi 'cause there were no taxis in the townships. So you're in a minibus, and the driver realizing that you are your mother's son, you know, figures out that she must have had relations with a white man. And he starts calling her a whore.

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: And she tells you when the minibus slows down, you got to jump. And she, like, throws you out of the van. And you had an infant brother at the time. So she jumps out holding him in such a way to protect him when she jumps out. And then you had to hit the ground and run. But anyways - so it must have been totally bizarre to get that kind of hatred from black people, too.

NOAH: But that's the sadness, and I guess that is the strange part of the human brain that, you know, people have studied for eons is hatred and self-hatred. You know, people going, how can you hate somebody that is of you? But that's what people do successfully in any regime that is governed by hate. You can convince people that the problem is not coming from the top but it is rather being created by the people who are being oppressed.

And so what the apartheid system was really good at doing was convincing groups to hate one another. And so what you do is you convince black people that the reason they are being oppressed is because there were some within their community who just can't behave. And if only they could behave, then everyone else would have more freedoms and liberties, which of course is not true.

But if you can - if you can convince people of that, then you can get them to focus their hatred on their fellow man who is trying to achieve freedom as opposed to focusing on the oppressive government. And we see that happen all over the world, regardless of race. It's a tactic that is used over and over successfully.

GROSS: There are articles that mention - and I don't think you mentioned this in your book - that your mother was half-Jewish. Is that right?

NOAH: My mother converted. So when people - when people say that, my mom converted to Judaism.

GROSS: Oh, so she didn't have a Jewish parent.

NOAH: No, no, no, no, no, no.

GROSS: When did she convert to Judaism?

NOAH: When I was 10 or 11 years old.

GROSS: She's so Christian in the book.

NOAH: Yeah, and then I think when you look at religion, you look at where Christianity came from, you know, my mom delved deeper into that. And she felt a deep connection, and she wanted to go as deep as possible into - into - into the world of religion. And that took her into Judaism.

GROSS: Oh.

NOAH: Yeah. So then I lived my life as a - as a part-white, part-black but then sometimes-Jewish kid. And I didn't understand 'cause she didn't make me convert. So, you know, I just had - we had instances - like, for instance, when I turned 13, she threw me a bar mitzvah. But nobody came.

GROSS: You had a bar mitzvah?

NOAH: Yeah, but nobody came because nobody knew what the hell that was. I only had black friends. No one knows what the hell you're doing. So it's just me and my mom. And she's celebrating, and she's reading things to me in Hebrew. I don't know what's going on. And she's telling me that now I'm a man. And I'm like, is - does that mean I have no chores? And she's like, no, you still have chores, but you're a man. I didn't understand most - most of it.

I mean, I still live today with my mom sending me, you know, Hebrew Scriptures or, you know, phrases or celebrating - you know, she'll write me an email and it'll be Shanah Tovah, and the next day it'll be something else, baruch hashem adonai. And I - I'm lost half of the time, but that was the world that I grew up in.

GROSS: You must've been so confused.

NOAH: I really was.

GROSS: (Laughter).

NOAH: I really was, and I think that was the gift my mother gave me. I think that was part of her religious pursuits. My mother's always looking for answers. She's always searching for new information. I think she has a thirst for hunger that very few possess innately.

And so my mother never, never stagnated in a place where she said, I have it all. She went, OK, I've read the Bible. I've read the Bible again. I'm reading the Bible again. OK, let me - where does this Bible come from? What does this Old Testament speak - who are the Israelites? Who - what is Judaism? And then she went, and I'm going to study that. And, you know, she wanted to almost get to the core.

You know how they say the book has been translated. And so my mother said, well, then I want to read the untranslated version. I want to read it the way it was written. But this - she applied this to everything in our lives. And that was not staying in the space that you are was supposed to be in, whether it be racially, whether it be in a community, whether it be gender norms.

Whatever it was, my mom said, I'm going to seek out more. And so I was constantly confused, which is sometimes a little bit, you know, disorienting. But I feel like it leads to a way more colorful life.

GROSS: Your mother sounds incredibly brave because she was always kind of flaunting the law. When she married your stepfather, who's - they're separated now.

NOAH: Yes. Yeah.

GROSS: He wanted her to be, like, the traditional wife, and she refused to...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...Be that. She - like you said, she just defied all conventions when she wanted to. And she talked back to people. I mean, she...

NOAH: (Laughter) It's funny you say that because when I wrote the book, I thought that I was the hero of my story. And in writing it, I came to realize over time that my mom was the hero. And I was, you know - I was just her punk-ass sidekick.

GROSS: (Laughter).

NOAH: I was lucky to come along for the ride. She really is an amazing woman, and the world we lived in, in South Africa at the time, was a very matriarchal society because so many black men had been removed from the home...

GROSS: Either in prison or in exile.

NOAH: ...Either in prison or in exile or even sent off to work in the mines. And, you know - and so families were living separately from the fathers. And so although, according to African culture, men were the head of the household, the truth is women were the ones who were raising everybody, including men. And growing up with my mother, that was something I really learned to appreciate.

GROSS: My guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show" and the author of the new memoir "Born A Crime." Coming up, when he was a teenager deprived of his rights because of the color of his skin, what made the situation even worse? Acne. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." He has a new memoir called "Born A Crime," about growing up in South Africa, the son of a black mother and white father, a relationship that was illegal when he was born during the apartheid era, which mandated separation by color.

Because your mother was black and your father was white and you - you were officially designated as colored...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...In South Africa, wherever you were, you were the anomaly.

NOAH: I was.

GROSS: Yeah. And so it was always hard for you to figure out like where do you fit? And you seemed to have learned so many ways of dealing with that including learning different languages and different dialects. So how many languages do you speak?

NOAH: I speak six currently.

GROSS: Name them.

NOAH: So I speak English, obviously, Afrikaans which is a derivative of Dutch that we have in South Africa. And then I speak African languages, so I speak Zulu. I speak Xhosa. I speak Tswana, and I speak Tsonga. And like - so those are my language at the core. And then I don't claim German, but I can have a conversation in it. So I'm trying to make that officially my seventh language and then hopefully I can learn Spanish.

GROSS: And it sounds like this is something you picked up from your mother who also spoke several languages...

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: ...And used them in a very kind of cunning way when she needed to to make sure that she wasn't, you know, imprisoned - although she was in prison (laughter).

NOAH: Yeah, but she got out of many situations.

GROSS: She got of it sometimes.

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah, yeah. And so there's a passage from your book that I'd like you to read that's about how your mother used language and how you use language...

NOAH: OK.

GROSS: ...To help navigate difficult situations.

NOAH: (Reading) Living with my mom, I saw how she used language to cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate the world. We were in a shop once, and the shopkeeper right in front of us turned to a security guard and he said it in Afrikaans (speaking Afrikaans) - follow those blacks in case they steal something. My mother turned around and said in beautiful fluent Afrikaans (speaking Afrikaans) - why don't you follow these blacks so you can help them find what they're looking for? (Speaking Afrikaans) the man said, apologizing in Afrikaans. Then - and this was the funny thing - he didn't apologize for being racist. He merely apologized for aiming his racism at us. Oh, I'm so sorry, he said, I thought you were like the other blacks. You know how they love to steal. I learned to use language like my mother did.

I would simulcast, give you the program in your own tongue. I get suspicious looks from people just walking down the street. Where are you from? They'd ask. I'd reply in whatever language they'd addressed me in using the same accent that they used. There would be a brief moment of confusion and then the suspicious look would disappear. Oh, OK. I thought you were a stranger. We're good then. It became a tool that served me my whole life. One day as a young man, I was walking down the streets and a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me closing in on me, and I could hear them talking to one another about how they were going to mug me. (Speaking Zulu). Let's get this white guy. You go to his left, and I'll come up behind him. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't run, so I just spun around real quick and said (speaking Zulu). Yo, guys, why don't we just mug someone together? I'm ready. Let's do it. They looked shocked for a moment, and then they started laughing. Oh, sorry, dude. We thought you were something else. We weren't trying to take anything from you. We were trying to steal from white people. Have a good day, man.

They were ready to do to me violent harm until they felt that we were part of the same tribe, and then we were cool. That and so many other smaller incidents in my life made me realize that language even more than color defines who you are to people. I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.

GROSS: That's Trevor Noah reading from his new memoir "Born A Crime." I like that passage so much in part because when I hear you on "The Daily Show" and in some of your standup comedy that I've heard on recording, you do accents and voices so well. Like, you can mimic other people really well, and it seems like that's something you learned to do out of self-preservation when you were young.

NOAH: Yeah, definitely. I think it was something I inherited from my mother who learned to do it. It's, you know - I, like a baby duckling, was merely mimicking the survival traits that my mother possessed. And I came to learn very quickly that language was a powerful, powerful tool.

Language and accents govern so much of how people think about other people, you know, and it's been happening since the beginning of time. I mean, even now in America, you know, when people say they hate immigrants. They're not referring to a Canadian immigrant. You know, they're not referring to somebody who has an accent who is slightly different to theirs.

It's often that voice that throws you off because I sometimes think it's the - you know what it is? It's when you hear somebody speaking in an accent, it's almost like they're invading your language while they're speaking to you because if you hear someone speak another language, you almost don't care. But when they speak your language with an accent, it feels like an invasion of something that belongs to you and immediately we change.

GROSS: Do you know what I think? Yeah. I think people think that people with accents that are a little hard to understand must be stupid...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...Because you don't understand what they're saying.

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: And therefore they're not smart.

NOAH: Yeah. That's - I've seen that everywhere. I've seen that everywhere. People, you know - people make jokes about that. And that was funny. When I first came to the U.S. - because I do accents and I've traveled the world...

GROSS: Yeah.

NOAH: ...And I have friends of almost every single ethnicity, and I would mimic them. And when I came to the U.S., I remember one day we're at "The Daily Show," and I mimicked my Chinese friend. And the guys at the show were like, oh, hey, don't ever do that again. And that's really racist.

GROSS: (Laughter).

NOAH: You shouldn't do that. And I said what do you mean it's racist? And they said, oh, you can't do a Chinese accent that's - and I said I'm not doing a Chinese accent. I'm doing my friend's accent. And they said, yeah, you can't do that. And I said, OK, but can I do a Russian accent? And they said, yeah, yeah, of course, you can do that. I said in a British accent? They said yeah, yeah, go ahead. And I couldn't understand.

And then I came to realize obviously because of the historical, you know, significance of that accent and how, you know, people who had Chinese accents will continue to have Chinese accents in America are treated as being stupid or not as intelligent as an English speaker who is fluent with an American accent. I came to realize why, but it's always fascinated me how quickly you can change where you stand with another human being just based on how you speak.

GROSS: One other thing about language I found this amazing in your book that you watched American TV shows, but they were broadcast in different languages. But if you wanted to hear it in the original American English you could simulcast it on the radio.

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: So you sometimes did that but what was your reaction when you heard the programs in their actual original voices?

NOAH: Oh, they - sometimes it was mind-blowing. There were some characters that I knew of like - I remember for most of my life, I grew up and Nightrider was, you know - David Hasselhoff was a Dutch character in my world. I guess in some ways he still is today. But, yeah, it was weird for me because there were certain characters who I had ideas of. Again, I came to realize the power and the importance of language. And it's more than just language and the way we perceive it.

If you look at this election, I feel like Donald Trump was speaking a different language to Hillary Clinton. You know, it's not dissimilar to what we saw in South Africa with our president Jacob Zuma. I remember sitting with people laughing when they would watch the debates, and they'd go this guy's a buffoon. Oh, man, he has such a low word count. He's got the grammar of a 5-year-old. He has the - you know, vocabulary of a toddler. And I said, yeah, but do know how many people find that appealing right now? He's up there and everybody understands what he's saying. And they were like, oh, can you imagine this guy as a president? And I said, yeah, but think of how many people who for the first time are listening to a presidential candidate understanding every single, quote, unquote, "policy" that he puts forward.

And sometimes that's a thing that I will call them, you know, like elites, not even liberal elites, just people who are educated. They forget sometimes that communication is more important than your grasp of language. You know, can you communicate effectively with a person? That's what I learned as a comedian. I remember one time I went on a little bender I tried to learn as many words as I could from the dictionary. And I thought I'm going to increase my vocabulary on stage. I'm going to expand my word count. My word cloud will be immense.

And I got onstage, and I lost half of the audience because half of the people in the audience were going we don't know what perambulate means. Why do we have to think about this? And I realized you've got to be careful in deciding what your intention is. Are you using language, you know, as a flourish or are you trying to communicate as effectively as possible with another human being? And that's what Donald Trump, in my opinion, did very, very well.

GROSS: Do you find yourself code switching in the U.S.?

NOAH: I do. I do definitely, depending on where I am. And code switching is fun for me. You know, I don't even do it intentionally. I just find, speaking to one person, I change a few words; I change my tone; I change my accent slightly. It's a seamless transition that I do without even thinking, like a chameleon. I don't think that I'm doing it. I just do it.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show," and now he has a memoir called "Born A Crime." We're going to take a short break and then be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." He has a new book, a memoir called "Born A Crime."

We talked about this a little bit the last time you were on the show. Your mother married the man who became your stepfather. He was an alcoholic. He was abusive. He beat her several times. And then when you were a teenager, he shot her.

NOAH: No I was in my early 20s when he shot her.

GROSS: Your early 20s.

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: OK. And he shot her twice?

NOAH: Shot her twice, once in the head, once in the lower torso.

GROSS: And she - she could have died. But it was almost literally a miracle that she survived because - tell us the trajectory of the bullet.

NOAH: Yeah. I mean, till this day, it's, you know - it's something we - no one understands. It's - the doctor use the term miracle, and he said, I hate using this term. He said, I'm a man of science. I'm a doctor. I don't use this word. But he said, it's a miracle your mom's alive.

She got shot in the back of the head. The bullet went in through where the spine basically connects to the brain. But it didn't hit the spine, missed all of the nerves and the veins. And it went in the back of her head, past just below the brain and then, on the exit, was aiming for the eye socket, but - was going to come out of the eye, but it hit the lower part of her eye socket. And the impact deflected the bullet. And so it came out of her nose, and so it ripped off one of her nostrils. But relatively speaking, the damage was was really little for a bullet being shot into your head.

GROSS: She was home in four days, back at work in seven days...

NOAH: (Laughter) She was.

GROSS: ...Which is kind of remarkable. But when you were a kid and your mother married this man who later shot her, it - judging from your memoir, you knew that there was something sinister and dangerous about him. And you worried about them getting married. You didn't want him...

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Around. And so I'm wondering, like, your mother just seems so smart about so many things. Did you lose - so much has been said about abusive relationships and how it's hard to get out of them and everything. But what was it like for you as a child to see your mother making what you believed - and what you turned out to be right - was a terrible judgment call?

NOAH: I mean, I learned, and I've come to learn as an adult that love is a hell of a drug. It's one of the most dangerous things that human beings can have. It's also one of the most beautiful things that human beings can possess because love, on one hand, gives you the ability to care for a human being sometimes more than you would care for yourself. Love, unfortunately, sometimes gives you the ability to forgive somebody and blind yourself to the truth.

And, you know, I lived in a world where I didn't share the love for my stepfather that my mother shared for him. She married him, you know? And I - I loved my mom. But I - I lived in the space where I was constantly afraid of the threats.

And I don't think I can ever judge any person for being involved in an abusive relationship, especially because of the amount of surprise that it comes with. You know, anyone who's in that situation, to go from a place where everything is going well - I will never forget the first time my mother was hit. It comes out of nowhere. You don't know what it is because it's never happened to you.

GROSS: Your mother, for the most part, was an incredibly brave woman, willing to defy convention, stand up to people, go her own way, pay the consequences. But on the whole, she sounds, like, really unflinching. And in the job you have now, you have to be that way, too. You have to stand up for things and not be afraid of criticism, not be afraid of offending people when you think the comedy is correctly hitting a satirical target. Do you feel like you inherited some of your mother's bravery or that you learned how to be brave from her? And if so, like, what are the things now that you feel like you have to be brave about?

NOAH: I think I - I was lucky enough to be in the shadow of giants. You know, my mom's magic dust sprinkled on me, and I hope I have enough of it to be as brave as she was and continues to be. Doing what I do now, I've come to realize now more so than ever that I have to approach what I - what I do every day on "The Daily Show" with complete honesty.

You know, funny enough, one of the biggest moments of realization was when Donald Trump won the election because when I came into the show, I said, I think this guy can win. This was when he first came down that escalator. He gave his first speech. And then I was like, wow, this guy's going to do well. And I remember man - people laughed at me. People were like, oh, you silly ignorant person who's just come to this world. You clearly shouldn't be at "The Daily Show" because you don't know what you're talking about.

And I was like, but I don't know. He seems like he connects with people. I can relate to him as a performer. I can see what tools he's using. He's good at riffing. He's good at taking the crowd on a journey. I can see what he's doing. And people would say - and all throughout the race - and there were times when on the show I would mention it. You know, I mean, that's why I said Trump reminds me of an African dictator. And that's where that came from because everyone said to me this guy is - he's just a fool. He's just - he's a buffoon.

I said, yeah, you can say that, but I've seen this before. I have seen this before. I've seen clowns that go on to take over their countries. I've seen buffoons who end up ruling their worlds. And it came to pass. And I've just come to realize I'm going to share my point of view. Some people won't like me for it, some people will. I will work every day to be as honest as I can because I do believe that we're all trying to get to the same place. But various people have tricked us into believing that we are not.

And I see America going into that space. And I know that in South Africa, we were in that space and we're still suffering from that space. And that was where a government very successfully convinced the majority of a population that every single person there was blocking the other people from achieving greatness in the country only to realize that we were all being oppressed at the same time.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." We're going to take a short break and then we'll be right back. He has a new memoir that's called "Born A Crime." This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." He has a new memoir about growing up in South Africa. It's called "Born A Crime." And he was born a crime in the sense that his mother is black, his father white. And when they conceived him, it was illegal in apartheid South Africa for a black person and a white person to have relations.

I want to ask you another question about your life. We've talked about how race and being biracial affected you growing up in South Africa. You mention in the book that you had terrible acne as a teenager, like, really bad.

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: OK. So that affects how people literally see you. It...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...Covers your face. So people were already seeing you through a certain lens because of your race, you know, because of being biracial and you didn't fit in any place as a result of that. How did having acne complicate your whole sense of identity?

NOAH: Well, the one thing I was lucky - I feel I was lucky about is when this happened I was in high school. And during the period I was in high school, race almost went out of the window because high school was oftentimes almost like a classist society. But the classism isn't about money. It's about coolness. What is your cool factor? How much cool do you possess? And that determines where you go.

Are you good at sports? Then you get to go into the coolest places. Are you super good looking? Then you get to be in the cool club and so on and so forth. And I possessed none of those qualities. I wasn't good at sports. I was on the chess team.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: I had such bad acne. I mean, people ask me now, they go, well, let me see pictures. I'm like I didn't take pictures for that reason. I shied away from any type of photograph that you would find because I've thought that I was hideous because in my eyes I was. You know, I had giant nodules on my face, around my neck. And, you know, the pus would ooze out of them. And I had to go on medication repeatedly and the medication makes you suicidal and depressed and then you have to go off it because of your kidneys. And it was just such a trying time.

And, I mean, in school, that's your cache. How you look and what you can do determine everything in school. And, you know, so because of that - luckily I wasn't the only kid so I was one of those kids who just stayed in a corner and watched the world pass them by. And I think if anything, the biggest knock that you experience in that world is - in terms of your identity is you feel like you are less than you are. You feel like you don't have the right to belong. You know, you're watching the world and the world exists without you.

GROSS: You mentioned that the medication led to the depression. And in - The New York Times Sunday Book Review has a Q and A called By the Book. And you were interviewed for that. I think it was in that that you said - the question was what books would you have that we would be surprised that you were reading. And you said self-help books about depression.

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: Yes.

NOAH: Yeah, that's one of the biggest things. And I'm proud to say that. That's another stigma that I think we need to get rid of is improving our minds and our mental health. You know, when when you suffer from depression, you go this is something that I have and I can work on it, you know? I often think of depression, though, as more of a - as more of a symptom than a cause.

You know, I go - I trace depression back to things. So I go, OK, I look back and I say my self-esteem was affected because of my skin and because my family had no money and I was ashamed of how poor I was. And I look at all of that and I was trying to hide myself. And so I felt like I was less than I was. And so that then leads to you being depressed. And I work on these things.

You know, and I think all of us should seek help, and not help is in a - you know, help shouldn't be seen as a frightening thing. Help shouldn't be seen as a weak thing. You get help at the gym. No one complains about that. You get help from your trainer. That's commonplace, and I think we need to spend more time doing that with mental help. You know, a lot of us have issues that we don't work on and we don't deal with, and I try. I try my utmost.

GROSS: So one more thing, I'm thinking, like, when you took over "The Daily Show" after Jon Stewart left, there was a sense of, OK, we have a biracial president, now we have a biracial host of "The Daily Show."

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: You know, like - you know, so, like, there's this kind of...

NOAH: Both half African. What are the chances?

GROSS: Both half African, exactly, so there's some kind of like he's not American but there's the simpatico, you know, with, like, the moment that we're living in politically. And now, like, things are really shifting politically. And I still think there's this sense of, like, you have this sense of the times but it's coming from a different part of you than...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...You know? Would you talk to that?

NOAH: It's interesting. It's funny that you just mentioned that. I've never thought of it like that before, that simpatico. I feel like it's almost fitting - isn't it? - that when there was a half-black-half-white-half-African man, he was in the White House, he was being mocked by Donald Trump. I think it's only fitting that now Donald Trump gets mocked by a half-black-half-white-half-African man when he's in the White House. So I feel like that actually worked out. I never thought of that.

But, yeah, I do feel like I have a sense of the times. A lot of the things America is experiencing now, I feel like I have lived through. I think there is a cause for concern. But I also warn people - and again, I said this on the show, you know, to a lot of people, don't make it hyperbole. Don't get outraged over things you shouldn't.

Oh, Trump ditched his press pool. That's just stupid and funny. Get over it. You know, Clinton ditched his press pool. This is something presidents do sometimes. Don't make everything that Trump does a scandal because what'll happen is you'll diminish the real scandals, you know? You've got to get over the fact that you hate the person and rather focus on what you're trying to do.

When I was learning how to box, that was the number one thing my trainer taught me. He said you can't get angry at every single time I hit you because that's why you're here. You're going to get hit. Acknowledge that you're going to get hit and now focus on how you're going to fight properly. And living through the times is exactly the right way to put it because I have seen a slice of this only on a different continent.

GROSS: Trevor Noah, thank you so much.

NOAH: Thank you for having me. Thank you. I'm a huge fan, so thank you very - this is great that we get to be in the same studio for a change.

GROSS: Trevor Noah is the host of "The Daily Show" and the author of the new memoir "Born A Crime." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "100 DAYS, 100 NIGHTS")

SHARON JONES: (Singing) One-hundred days, 100 nights to know a man's heart...

GROSS: We'll listen back to two interviews with soul singer Sharon Jones. She died Friday at age 60 of pancreatic cancer. Jones, who is often called the female James Brown, was the subject of a documentary released over the summer. I hope you'll join us.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, John Sheehan, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden and Mooj Zadie. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "100 DAYS, 100 NIGHTS")

JONES: (Singing) When his true, his true self unfolds, yes it does. He may be mellow, he may be kind, treat you good all the time. But there's something just beyond what he's told. One-hundred days, 100 nights to know a man's heart. One hundred days, 100 nights to know a man's heart. And a little more, before, he knows his own. Wait a minute, maybe I need to slow it down just a little, take my time.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Trevor Noah Says He Grew Up 'In The Shadow Of A Giant' (His Mom)." Fresh Air, 22 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473646885&it=r&asid=538c51dc0efb688fc6891e543213f303. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A473646885

'Daily Show' Host Writes About Growing Up Biracial In South Africa
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 National Public Radio, Inc. (NPR). All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions page at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
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To listen to this broadcast, click here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=501679293

HOST: RENEE MONTAGNE

RENEE MONTAGNE:Taking over the host chair after Jon Stewart left "The Daily Show," Trevor Noah faced a high bar. After all, he was a South African comedian riffing on America's issues, just as he's done in this election.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE DAILY SHOW")

TREVOR NOAH:Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, Obama and now Trump - one of these things is not like the other.

(LAUGHTER)

: And if you're thinking it's Obama because he's black, you probably voted for Trump.

: Trevor Noah and his comedy were shaped in a big way by the politics of his home country. He was born in 1984 to a white father and a black mother, the rarest of rare unions under South Africa's oppressive system of apartheid. His mother was pretty with a strong sense of adventure and a taste for fun. Still, marriage to his Swiss father was out of the question. Even their relationship was against the law and became even more complicated after the evidence of it - that would be Trevor - arrived.

: My mom, dressing up in disguise as a maid so that she wasn't questioned as to why she was in a white area - she looked like she was my caretaker as opposed to being my mother. The same would go for my father, not holding my hand or anything because he couldn't be seen to be the father of a mixed-race child.

You know, I'm running down the street, and he's running away because he doesn't want us to get into trouble. And I think I'm playing a game. And what you don't realize is that they're basically running away from the law.

: In his poignant new memoir called "Born A Crime," Trevor Noah finds humor even in the toughest times in Johannesburg. It details the peculiar and charged racial world he had to navigate as a little boy - not quite black, not quite white.

: So you were considered superior to a black person but inferior to a white person. And so, as crazy as it sounds, in my own family, I would've been given more privileges than my own mother and half of my family. And I would've been given fewer privileges than my father and the other half of my family. And so...

: The white half?

: Yeah, the white half.

: There's a story - and, again, it's a strange and - you make it funny in moments - but also not - a story about your grandmother not ever paddling you, you know, not ever punishing you...

: Yes.

: ...Where she would punish your cousins who were not mixed.

: My grandmother and grandfather were very much from a world where they had been taught the importance of, you know, respect between the races. So my own grandmother treated me as if I were a person who was of a higher standing than they were. In her eyes, I was closer to being the white man than I was a member of the family. So she was terrified of administering any form of discipline.

You know, and my mom always used to be - she'd be furious about that. She'd go like, oh, you should hit him harder than the rest. He's the naughtiest of all of them. My grandma was like, oh - she'd always say - she'd be like, I can't hit him. I can't. Oh, he's going to become black and blue and green. I don't know what to do with white children. Black children are easy. You can hit them. They stay the same. She's like, oh, I can't hit that one. I can't hit white children.

: Well, your mother, Patricia Noah - she comes across as an extraordinary woman. I mean, I'm not even sure where to begin to ask you about her.

: Why - I can't even begin, to be honest.

: She is amazing (laughter).

: I think - you know what happened? Funny enough, when I started writing the book, I thought I was writing a series of essays about growing up in South Africa and just a series of funny stories in and around how I had been brought up. By the time I was finished, I realized, essentially, I had written a story about a mother and a son, a story of a single mother - because that's what she was forced to be by the law - raising a child in a world where the two of them were many times almost like outlaws.

I've always loved my mom. And I've always thought she's amazing, but even I was shocked at how amazing she was. My mother went from eating food with pigs in a village off the east coast of South Africa and then just looking at how far she brought herself and how she did it with nothing in the face of what seemed like an unending system that wasn't meant for her to succeed.

: She would always say don't fight the system, mock the system.

: Yeah. My mom never believed in the norm. She still doesn't. And she wouldn't fight it. She would expose it by living her life, I guess. So when my mom learned how to type - when she took a secretarial course, it was the most ridiculous thing she could have ever done. Even when taking the course, the person said to her, you do realize how ridiculous this is? Black people work in the service industry. You work as a maid. You work as a gardener. There is no job for you where you are working on a typewriter. And my mother said, I don't care. And she took a typing course.

And when the country started employing a few black people into major corporations, now my mother had a skill that very few black people possessed, and that was typing. She found ways to break the system. She found ways to exist beyond what people said she could do.

: And in the midst of all of this, you describe what it means to have been you - you and your mother - on any given Sunday, where you got into high theological debates (laughter) because...

: Yes, oh, yes.

: ...Church was her way of spending Sunday.

: (Laughter) Yeah. My mom - she became a born-again Christian, and every Sunday was three churches because, I guess, you know, there was different Jesus at all of them. I loved the Bible and Sunday school and - but, at some point, you're just like, I get it. Can we just skip a few of these and go home?

: Although, you did try and argue you're way out of it, usually citing that maybe Jesus didn't really want you to go to church. He wanted you to...

: Oh, yeah, all the time. I would say I have a headache. My mother would say, pray to Jesus to get rid of the headache. Then I would say, or you could give me some money to go and buy some aspirin. And she would say, no, just pray, and the headache will go away. And then I'll say, well, I've already prayed that God will give us money so that I can go buy aspirin, and I will pray to thank him for the medicine that he has given me.

And so we would always have these little - what I thought were very high-minded arguments about religion and the different ways in which we processed the information.

: Reading this book, I got the impression that you were - without ever knowing it - on a path to exactly where you are now. But I'm wondering what you think. I mean, did all these experiences set you up for comedy?

: I think it set me up for where I am now in life. More of my comedy and my showbiz and that feeling came, for me, partly, from my mother - came for me from the world that I lived in. But I always say to people - I go, I think I was a comedian before I knew that comedy, as a line of work, existed. So I was just doing it without getting paid. And then, luckily, I've made up for that.

: Well, thank you very much for spending the time to talk with us.

: Thank you so much for having me, Renee.

: Trevor Noah, host of "The Daily Show" - his memoir is called "Born A Crime."

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"'Daily Show' Host Writes About Growing Up Biracial In South Africa." Morning Edition, 11 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473611465&it=r&asid=906b6566f62aaee1d4b6125972287f1a. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A473611465

How Trevor Noah went from biracial youth in South Africa to leading light on US TV
Karen Heller
(Nov. 10, 2016): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Byline: Karen Heller

NEW YORK - Trump. Trump. Clinton. The Obamas dancing like dorks.

Such is the stuff of a recent pre-election morning meeting at "The Daily Show" headquarters. Trevor Noah enters, water bottle and orange in hand, and wedges himself in among the writers, his back never pressing against the sofa.

"Can we talk about Brexit?" he asks. "I find Brexit fascinating, because in the U.S., people see it as done and dusted."

They talk of Brexit, how British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resembles a Muppet. But then the discussion swiftly returns to the steady drip of Trump, Trump, Trump.

You may hire a guy for his global perspective, but comedy comes back to the familiar fast.

Last year, after a 16-year reign, Jon Stewart was replaced by a young comedian who is nothing like him: foreign, biracial, cool, GQ-photogenic and utterly unknown to Americans, having appeared on the show only three times before being tapped as the successor.

Noah was given six weeks to create his own version of the program, all during a presidential campaign that became so absurd and unprecedented as to seem the work of deranged comedy writers. (When Trump won, Noah told his audience that "it feels like the end of the world.")

At the time, the move seemed unfair, not only to the show's devout audience but also to Stewart's replacement. Nor was Noah's start aided by the discovery of old tweets critical of Jews and heavier women.

Noah remained undaunted. "I had no fears, because I was extremely ignorant. It was bliss," the 32-year-old says later, sitting in a makeup room. "Only an idiot would take the job after Jon Stewart, and I was that idiot." (This from a man confident enough to conduct an interview while a barber trims a nanometer off his close-cropped hair.)

He took the job, continued doing stand-up on nights off and, oh, wrote an affecting memoir, "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood," which is also a love letter to his mother.

The "crime" was that his birth in 1984 violated South Africa's 1927 Immorality Act, which prohibited "illicit carnal intercourse" between a "European male" and a "native female." As the child of a black mother and a white father in a society that kept the two races strictly separated, Noah has long lived outside rigid racial lines. "I never met any kids who were biracial," he says.

His defiant mother was jailed so many times for breaking apartheid's severe racial laws and frequenting whites-only areas that "I think she even lost count," Noah says.

Before apartheid ended when he was almost 6, young Trevor was kept mostly indoors, often staying in Soweto with his maternal grandmother, who told him, "I'm afraid they will steal you."

He thought she meant the people in the township where he lived with his mother. (He never lived with his father, a Swiss national residing in South Africa whom his mother, a secretary, met when she was living illegally in a Johannesburg apartment building that prohibited blacks.)

"I thought she was being paranoid. And it was only while writing the book," he says, "that I realized that she was afraid, rightfully so, that the police would take me."

He couldn't be seen in public with his parents. "In my head, I grew up running with my parents," Noah says. His mother, told him otherwise: "You were chasing your father down the street and I was chasing you because he couldn't be seen with you because of the police."

Because of his lighter skin, Noah was viewed as "coloured" by society and at school, a racial classification shared by no other member of his black family.

"My grandmother was very lenient to me because of my skin color," he says. "But often I saw myself as inferior, because I grew up in a black world. I was the only kid who was getting sunburned, the only kid whose skin would show bruises the way it did. I was stared at whether it was a wedding or a funeral or a family gathering with extended members. So, if anything, I didn't see myself as whole or complete or part of a thing."

In his memoir, the comedian portrays his mother, Patricia Noah, as fiercely Christian - attending as many as three churches on Sunday (black, white and mixed) - and funny, proud and fearless. He writes that she once threw her eldest son from a moving car to save his life, and took a bullet to the head from Noah's abusive stepfather and lived to joke about it.

"On the bright side," she told Noah from her hospital bed, "now you're officially the best-looking person in the family."

Although they remain close, "she'll never come over," says Noah, who returns home six times a year. "I don't even know if she watches the show." He pauses. "I don't think she does." (His father, whom he visited on Sundays growing up, eventually returned to Switzerland.)

Noah decided to become a stand-up comedian before he had ever seen one in his country, or before he knew that he could make a living doing such a thing.

"Famous is an understatement. He's mega-famous in South Africa," says Ugandan comedian Joseph Opio. "He's basically the South African comedy industry personified."

Most of the writers and producers - as well as the work culture - from Stewart's tenure on "The Daily Show" were retained, but Noah asked Opio and comedian David Kibuuka, who was born in Uganda but later moved to South Africa, to join the writing staff. Says Opio, "We share an outsider's voice." In the packed meeting of almost 30 staffers, Noah, Opio and Kibuuka, along with show correspondent Roy Wood Jr., are the only black participants.

The show's Hell's Kitchen offices resemble an indoor dog park. The place is fueled by staggering quantities of caffeine and junk food. The latter still astonishes Noah and his African colleagues, who grew up viewing cake as a rarity, not a given. Noah's grandmother's house was "not a two-bedroom house. A two-room house," he says, with no running water, and an outdoor communal faucet and a toilet shared by multiple families.

Noah learned quickly that to work with a successful program and a large (108-member) production team, "you really have to go for evolution rather than revolution," he says. "Because anything you do initially is seen as incorrect."

Critics fault him for appearing too detached on-screen, where Stewart delivered arias of indignation. "But Trevor hasn't earned the right to be that angry about what's happening in America," Opio says. "And where we've come from, we've seen worse things."

Says Noah, "I understand that some people think of me as cold and somewhat dismissive, but the truth is I'm genuine."

He lived in the United States previously, from 2010 to 2012, with Los Angeles as his base, and became the first African comedian - not South African, from the entire continent - to appear on "The Tonight Show." (He thinks he is still the only one to have done so.)

"I was extremely lonely," he says. "Hollywood is like a person that doesn't have time to be with you, but it always wants you to be available."

He went to Great Britain, toured constantly, then returned to New York. "Jon called and said he wanted to hang out," he recalls. So Noah would visit the "Daily Show" office, "sit there and listen to what people were saying." He was given a small desk in a shared office, so that he might contribute some writing.He never thought it would ultimately end in his joining the staff, let alone hosting.

Making the show his own requires patience, though he didn't understand this when he first arrived. "When I started, I had lofty ideas of what I was going to do," he says, "and I thought I would do it within 100 days, and I would change everything."

Fast and all at once wasn't going to work. "I learned," Noah says. "The show was my Guantanamo."

Nor is the writing staff's task easy. "It's very difficult writing for me," he says. "You are writing for a biracial South African, who is from a world you cannot lock down. You cannot understand my experience. It is the black experience, but it's a different black experience."

So, to help his audience understand, he did what only he could do, and wrote the story of his childhood.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Heller, Karen. "How Trevor Noah went from biracial youth in South Africa to leading light on US TV." Washington Post, 10 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469663595&it=r&asid=b3bdc2ed7a71ce9a33ffda2389ffec47. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A469663595

Late-night hosts sound off
Patrick Ryan
(July 18, 2016): Lifestyle: p02D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
For the next two weeks, late-night viewers will be seeing red and blue. HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, NBC's Late Night With Seth Meyers and Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Trevor Noah, among others, are ramping up their election coverage for this week's Republican National Convention (starting Monday in Cleveland) and next week's Democratic National Convention (in Philadelphia). USA TODAY's Patrick Ryan polled the hosts on presumed presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

ON TRUMP'S CHANCES OF BECOMING PRESIDENT:

"Maybe it's because I'm an optimist, but I don't think Trump is going to do well in the general election," Noah says. "I don't think America is going to elect somebody who's that divisive (and) has no appeal with minorities. The thing that saddens me and makes me afraid is the fact that he has found such a large swath of support, that there are that many people who truly believe the things that he's saying."

On Trump's VP pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence:

"I doubt that's who he wanted," Maher says. "I bet his kids talked him into that, because he's not flashy. He's just an old-school, white-haired, white guy, super anti-gay, and he doesn't seem like the Trump type. But whoever was going to take this job was going to be some sort of loser, because there's no future in it. That's why no one's going to the convention, for chrissake."

On hopes for the GOP convention:

"I'm rooting for a peaceful riot," Maher says. "I don't want anyone to get hurt, but it would be great if there was some sort of uprising with pitchforks involved. I keep seeing people on TV talking about how they're going to try to take (the nomination) away from Trump. a Even if that doesn't happen, it's just such a (joke) already. When you look at those speakers: (actor) Antonio Sabto Jr.? (LPGA) golfer (Natalie Gulbis)? It's hysterical. For months, he was talking about how he was going to have all these great people on the stage. It just shows what a con man he really is."

On the challenge of writing jokes about Trump and Clinton:

"We just had a two-week break, and that came at the right time to take a breath and just stop talking about it all," Meyers says. "But it's nice to be back, certainly with these conventions. (With) Trump, people say the jokes write themselves. I don't think that's the case, but he certainly gives you more things to write jokes about than any previous candidate. Our biggest challenge with Hillary is just people have known her as a politician for so long that sometimes it feels like they're just less excited about her as a candidate."

On the defining moments of their campaigns:

For Clinton, "it was the ending of the Benghazi hearing, because that has really been all Hillary has been up against most of this campaign: herself," Noah says. "Bernie started rallying against her late, but he was never really a contender." For Trump, it was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's endorsement. He "was the first legitimate politician who stepped up and said, 'I'm with Trump,'" Noah says. "Before that, he was seen completely as an outsider and a madman. But when Christie did that, it was now a case of, 'Are you with us or are you against us?'"

CAPTION(S):

photo

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ryan, Patrick. "Late-night hosts sound off." USA Today, 18 July 2016, p. 02D. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA458722917&it=r&asid=98b726e81038807f487493264a77ab82. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A458722917

Trevor Noah Trashes Trump: 'You Cannot Lie and Say Donald Trump Would Be a Good President'
(July 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Daily Beast Company LLC
http://www.thedailybeast.com
Before he heads to the 2016 conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia, Trevor Noah looks back at his first nine months as host of The Daily Show.

Nine months into his run as host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah is not yet America's most-trusted news source. And as he tells The Daily Beast in a new interview this week ahead of next week's 2016 Republican and Democratic conventions, "replacing" Jon Stewart was never his goal.

But while the 32-year-old South African comedian has taken heat from critics for offering what some view as a less impassioned, more facile brand of late-night political comedy since he first sat in Stewart's chair last September, Noah has in recent weeks been showing more of a willingness to take a stand when he thinks it's important.

Take last week's commentary on the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. With one simple and seemingly obvious phrase--"you can be pro-cop and pro-black"--Noah deftly used his platform to put forward a positive message about an issue threatening to tear this country apart. Then, hours later, a sniper killed five police officers and wounded seven others during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.

This month, Noah is putting everything else aside and taking his show on the road for the Republican and Democratic conventions. When Noah first found out he would be succeeding Stewart, he says he wanted to move the show away from U.S. politics. But the 2016 presidential election, and the rise of Donald Trump in particular, have just been too good to pass up.

After November, however, Noah says viewers shouldn't be surprised if his Daily Show "spreads its wings" and puts less focus on domestic issues, even if Trump is in the Oval Office.

Below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

What's the biggest thing you know about hosting now that you didn't when you started?

The biggest thing I know now that I didn't know when I started was just how much scrutiny there was, you know? I really took for granted how divisive and how politicized this position would be. I've come from a world where satire exists, but very seldom is the satirist the target of the criticism, which is a very, very strange world to be in. It's an interesting world where people will level more, if not the same level of criticism at a satirist than they will at the topic of the satire itself, which tells me there's something wrong with the system. But, I mean, that's the world that I'm in.

In an interview on NPR last fall, you said you "did not anticipate how much journalism" you would have to do as host of what is supposed to be a comedy show. How are you feeling these days about your responsibility as Jon Stewart's successor?

Well, I think I've just come to accept it as part of what I'm doing for now. Over a few years, I think the vision of the show will be shaped more completely. I know it took Jon at least three years to get to his final destination. But I'm taking my time and I'm working as fast and as hard as I can, but also not trying to rush it. And I realize that there are certain things I need to do. So you have to essentially do your own investigating, you have to be researching your own facts, discovering your own sources, because at the end of the day, the news in America is not the most reliable. And this is an unfortunate truth, whether it be the fact that they sometimes take a political bent or the fact that it's ratings-driven. These are two things that undermine the integrity of the news. And so it means if you are trying to comment on the truth, you are in a precarious position.

Do you think it helps that some of that responsibility has been transferred to former Daily Show correspondents like John Oliver and Samantha Bee?

Oh, definitely. I think the more people that do it, the better. What John Oliver does is really fun and interesting; it sparks my mind in a different way. Sam Bee, who has come in and is angry and fighting, is much needed as well. I think everyone has to be playing their role. It's like The Avengers. Everyone is playing their position, everyone is doing their thing. You need Hulk for certain moves. You need Thor to step in for certain positions. And Iron Man is going to be doing his job. At the end of the day, you need everybody doing as much as they can to move the ball of progress forward.

The show is going to both political conventions this month. What are you looking forward to at each event?

Wow, what am I looking forward to? In Cleveland, I'm looking forward to any bit of chaos that happens in the process. I'm still excited for the idea that some delegates will try to stage a coup. I'm excited at the idea of it somehow slipping out of Donald Trump's grasp. But I'm also excited at the idea of him winning in the end and taking the Republican Party to the place that I feel like it has basically been alluding that it has wanted to go all along but didn't realize that they didn't actually want to. I'm anticipating chaos--both in the streets and at the event. And then I guess at the DNC, I guess now that Bernie Sanders has come in and endorsed Hillary, it doesn't seem like there is going to be much madness. It seems like it's going to be a cohesive celebration of the nomination of the first female presidential candidate, which is really exciting.

Did you see his endorsement of her this week and did you think it was warm enough of an embrace?

Yeah, I think it's as warm as it could be in terms of it being genuine. I mean, if Bernie now all of a sudden flipped and became super, completely warm, then you'd be like, "Wait, who are you?" So I think in terms of him and his policy positions and how he has shifted Hillary towards his agenda and her acknowledging that and working to embrace a lot of his positions, that's as genuine as it can be for now. And that's a good place to be. But I agree with what he's saying. Whether you're a Democrat, or even a Republican, you cannot lie and say Donald Trump would be a good president. That's just a fallacy.

What has it been like for you to watch this campaign process as an outsider to the U.S.?

I think the biggest thing has been how long it is. How vague it is. How convoluted it is. It's like, "Are you guys really doing this for this long? Going around in this many circles?" A lot of it seems pointless as well. It genuinely seems done for the sake of doing it, but people have forgotten the real purpose behind it. And so as an outsider I watch this and I say, "Why would you do this the way you are doing it? Have you not tried different ways? Do you not think there are ways to improve your campaign financing structures? Do you not think there are ways you could improve your debates? Do you not think there are ways you could improve just general accountability with regards to the facts?" These are strange things that I struggle to come to grips with. And I guess that's what I've tried to bring across on the show.

Your piece on the latest police shootings and Black Lives Matter protests received a ton of attention last week. But you filmed that before the massacre in Dallas. What did you think when you first heard about that shooting?

I had many thoughts. I was afraid, I was sad. I was afraid because it felt like it was taking America into a very scary place that at some point you won't be able to come back from. I was sad because it destroyed a crucial dialogue that was taking place. You know, a lot of people don't realize that Dallas is one of the few police departments in the country that has realized its implicit bias, realized there are ways that they can improve their local police force and they've been working towards that. And even at the protest the police were there with protesters taking pictures, they were talking. There was a generally joyous atmosphere where the police were protecting and serving those people who had a right to protest.

And then because of the actions of one man, fueled by whatever he may have been fueled by--and we don't know what mental state he was in--but for one person to go and do that, it's completely taken the conversation back to that divisive place where it was before, which was, "Now what are you? Are you black or are you cop? Are you pro or are you against?" It's just taken everybody back so many steps. And you felt that there was a general groundswell of people coming together on the Friday when people were marching and celebrities were getting involved and sports people and singers and news anchors. There was a beautiful feeling of people coming together and acknowledging that there was a problem. Not that there were people to blame, but just that there was a problem that we should be fixing. And then when I saw that, I was just like, "Here we go, back again."

When big tragedies happen like this, whether it's the shooting in Orlando or the attacks in Paris, what do you feel like your role is in terms of communicating that to the country?

I think my role, I've realized, is just to be a human at that time. It's to be a human that connects with an audience. My role is to connect people's emotions with some sort of sense in terms of where to go from here and how we process this information. I guess my role is just to give people some space wherein they can get the catharsis that they need.

There has been the perception in the press that, compared to Jon Stewart, you haven't made your own political beliefs a big part of the show. Is that intentional and are there issues that you can see yourself speaking out about more forcefully?

It's funny how people write and people's writing blows with the wind. I was a big fan of The Daily Show. I was a friend of Jon Stewart's and he had brought me into his world. And I remember him showing me articles where people were writing stuff about him being too angry and him being bad for political discourse. People blow in the direction that they choose to blow and you come to realize you just have to do what you're going to do at your own pace in your own way and find a way to connect to your audience as authentically as possible. So, exactly what you said is correct, "compared to Jon Stewart." And that is immediately where it falls apart--if you compare. I never intended to replace Jon Stewart. I'm not replacing him. Jon Stewart left and then I'm taking up the vacancy. Replacing Jon Stewart is impossible and something I would have never tried and have never tried. But I guess I understand the instinct people have to draw that comparison. But because I'm not trying to do that, it's something where I'm like, "Well, I cannot satisfy a person's need for me to be another human being, because that's not who I am." So all I keep doing is working to be myself and working to get my point of view across in the best way possible.

Have you heard from Jon Stewart recently or does he reach out to you after you do certain segments?

That's the great thing about Jon: we just talk when we talk. It's not like he's keeping an eye on the show and making sure that I don't crash the ship. He's just checking in on me like, "Hey, how are you? What's going on in life or so on and so forth?" We just touch base as people because we've come to realize, and I think he said this on the David Axelrod podcast, that there's so much more to life than just this bubble of the show. And you have to learn that what you're trying to do, in essence, is bring life to the show instead of trying to make the show life. And that's what we strive to do and that's what I strive to do now.

Going back to the election, when Obama was elected, a lot of people thought Jon Stewart wouldn't be as funny as he was when George W. Bush was president. How will the outcome of this year's election affect your show, whether it's Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

That really is a tough one, because I don't know. I will say this though: I don't think of this show as being as focused on policy as maybe The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was. So I don't know if it will affect us that much. I do know that if Donald Trump becomes president, A) I don't know if I'll be able to stay here, and B) I don't know what the new laws or rules will become. I mean, this is the same man who says he wants to open up the libel laws, change them so that people like you and me can be sued if he feels that what we're saying about him is damaging--even if it's based in fact. So we don't know where we'll be.

We know with Hillary--like I say to people all the time, I wouldn't be shocked if Hillary's plagued by a scandal in the middle of her presidency. She's a solid politician, but I don't think that means the presidency will be devoid of any interesting scandals. But I also think that after the election, that's when The Daily Show with Trevor Noah will spread its wings a little bit more, we'll have more of an opportunity to focus on the world. I watch politicians and elections and politics all around the world. I was interested in what was happening in Australia in their recent elections. I'm keenly following Brexit and what's happening there with Theresa May. There's so much more to absorb in the world, so if you have a boring presidency, which is what I would hope for America, that would be good. Because boring is good; it means things are going as they should go and everyone's having a good time. Then you would get an opportunity to enjoy what's happening in the rest of the world.

So do you resent Donald Trump for forcing you to pay so much attention to him?

Oh, no. Not at all, not at all. I acknowledge him as a giver of gifts. And that gift is comedy and that gift is madness. So essentially, he's here for now because he needs to be here for now and I accept that he's a part of my show and I will comment on him accordingly. And then when he is gone, he will be gone.

by Matt Wilstein

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Trevor Noah Trashes Trump: 'You Cannot Lie and Say Donald Trump Would Be a Good President'." Daily Beast, 15 July 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461387072&it=r&asid=d526a58ee5cc58612120554b7d842f37. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A461387072

Under Apartheid, Trevor Noah's Mom Taught Him To Face Injustice With Humor
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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I miss Jon Stewart, but I'm glad to say I've been enjoying Trevor Noah who took over "The Daily Show" in September. He's brought an international perspective to the show. He's South African, the son of a black mother and white father whose relationship was illegal under apartheid, which mandated separation of the races. Noah grew up during the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. He became famous in South Africa as a comic and TV personality hosting a late-night show, a dating game show and awards ceremonies. He spent years traveling around the world doing standup. We'll hear some of his standup comedy a little later, but let's start with what may be the best-known segment he's done so far on "The Daily Show." This is from last October when he was comparing Donald Trump's rhetoric with statements made by African presidents and dictators.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE DAILY SHOW")

NOAH: What I'm trying to say is Donald Trump is president. He just happens to be running on the wrong continent.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: In fact, once you realize that Trump is basically the perfect African president, you start to notice the similarities everywhere, like the level of self-regard.

TRUMP: I say not in a braggadocious way, I've made billions and billions of dollars.

I made a tremendous amount of money.

I'm really rich.

I have a great temperament.

They love me anyway. I don't have to do this.

I've done an amazing job.

I was born with a certain intellect. God helped me by giving me a certain brain.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: I bet that's the one time that God's like, I don't need the praise. It's cool. That's you, that's you. I'm cool. Now, is that extraordinary level of bragging presidential? Well, let's ask a man who actually was president, Idi Amin, former president and best president of Uganda.

AMIN: The people likes me very much. I am very popular.

I am very powerful.

I am the one who has got the money.

I have got a very good brain.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: I have a very good brain. And I know this because every time I ask people if I have a good brain, they say, of course, Mr. President. Now please let my family go. You've already killed my sister. I think you've proved your points.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's Trevor Noah on "The Daily Show." Trevor Noah, welcome to FRESH AIR. Thanks so much for coming. Had you seen "The Daily Show" in South Africa?

NOAH: Yeah, but interestingly enough, when I first started watching "The Daily Show," we used to see it on CNN. And so my perception of "The Daily Show" was very different. I thought that Jon Stewart was a news anchor who didn't take his job seriously 'cause I would always see this show...

GROSS: You're kidding, right?

NOAH: No, I'm being serious. In a lot of regions, CNN actually broadcasts "The Daily Show." So there's a global edition of "The Daily Show" that's one episode. And in countries where there's no Comedy Central or the show itself is not picked up, it'll be on CNN. And because it looked like a news show and it had the same colors as CNN and the ticker and - I just worked under the assumption that it was part of the news programming. And so I was just like, this is a really funny show, and that's how I knew it.

GROSS: So what is your role now in writing and editing the show?

NOAH: From 8 a.m. in the morning, we start dissecting the news, discussing it, looking for angles, looking for takes, building a show, rewriting it, getting it together, gathering materials. We work throughout the day and then in the evening, after we've rehearsed it and rewritten it, then I go out and we tape the show. And then after that taping, we sit down and we dissect the show, see what could be better, work to get better every single day because that's really the nature of a late-night show, especially something that's on daily, is that you're on daily. So, you know, it's not unlike the news, funny enough. I was chatting to Rachel Maddow about it. And she was saying the quickest thing you have to learn is your best show only lasts for a night and your worst show only lasts for a night, and then you're back doing it tomorrow.

GROSS: That leads to manic depression, doesn't it?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: A show's great and you feel great and a show's bad and it's like, oh, this is so horrible.

NOAH: Yeah, yeah, that's why you have to learn to live outside the show. I think one of the biggest things I've had to learn is TV destroys your perspective. You know, when I think back to myself and I go - if anyone who tries to convince me otherwise, I have to stop sometimes and go not - what? - 25 years ago, I was living in basically a very elevated hut with no running water or indoor sanitation. And so, like, problems - I can't trick myself into getting stressed by first world problems. Things are going great. Things are going very, very well.

GROSS: Does Jon watch "The Daily Show" now? And does he give you feedback on it?

NOAH: He does. He does. But he doesn't - he gives me feedback sporadically because he knows better than anyone that the thing is happening, you know? It takes such a long time for - it's like captaining a, you know, a giant ship. You make a change and you still have to wait to see that change happen. It's not a nimble speedboat. So Jon and I, if anything, we spend more time talking about standup comedy and the pigs on his farm and just the randomness in our lives because, you know, if anything, we were friends before we were linked through this behemoth that is "The Daily Show." So that's what we spend time talking about, but he's always there if I need him. But I also try not to need him too much because then I won't find or learn these things myself.

GROSS: How did you become friends?

NOAH: Just - he reached out to me many, many years ago. He saw my comedy, he said I'd like to meet you and then we met. And then Jon and I just, you know, we just connected and we hung out. And we have a similar view on the world but we come at it from different perspectives, obviously. So we just, you know, we just get along really well. And that was something that progressed over time.

GROSS: See you were briefly a contributor to "The Daily Show" before becoming the host. You were friends before becoming a contributor?

NOAH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The contributor thing happened because we got along. Jon asked me to come to the show and hang out and just see how he does what he does. And we had so much fun, you know, just off camera, that Jon was like, hey, we should do this on screen. Let's chat about this thing on screen. And so we did that. And then we'd have another conversation, and Jon would go, hey, we should do that on camera. So he'd go next time you're in America, let's hang out and let's - come to the show and let's do another chat. And so that's all it was, you know? It was never me aspiring to that position. It was never me aspiring to "The Daily Show." It was just me being me and then hanging out with my friend Jon.

GROSS: Nice (laughter) so in your standup comedy, you've talked about being excited about coming to America where you would be defined as black instead of - I don't know - colored or mixed race in South Africa 'cause your father is white, your mother is black and you were born during the apartheid era. So you did some comedy in the U.S. about opening a bank account in America and having to fill out your race or ethnicity and you don't really know what to write in. And a bank representative is helping you fill out the form. So this is Trevor Noah from his 2013 album "African American."

(SOUNDBITE OF ALBUM, "AFRICAN AMERICAN")

NOAH: She was really helpful. She was like - she's this blonde woman and she was like, yeah, you can go ahead and fill out everything you need to. And, yeah, we'll just go ahead and open that bank account. I said, OK, I don't know what to do here. And she was like, let me have a look. Well, you can just, yeah, you just go ahead and tick whatever race you want to go with. I said, what do you mean whatever race? She's like, well, look, it's just for statistical purposes, so, like, you can choose whatever you want and then you can do it. And I was like, choose whatever? I was like, I've never been given that option before.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: And I looked at the boxes and, I mean, there was black. That's the reason I came. The black box was there. I was like, well, that's it. I'll choose it. But then I looked to the left and there was the white box and, oh, it looked good. It just...

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: I mean, don't get me wrong, it was the same as the other boxes. But there must've been a reason it was first in line, it was just like - you know? That was prime box right there. That was just - I looked at that white box and I was like, yeah, yeah. And so I looked at her and I said, any box? And she's like, yeah, yeah, any box. And I played it safe. I said, so I can go with black? She was like, you know what? A lot of them choose black, yeah, yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: And so just because she said that, I looked at her and I said, no, you know what? I'm white. I'm going with white. And then she did this thing that I've come to learn is the reaction of white liberal women in America. Whenever they hear something or see something that they can't truly comprehend, they don't agree with it, but for fear of being judged, they internalize their emotions and then they almost have like this malfunction like a robot.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: I don't know if you've - it's amazing to see 'cause as soon as I said white - I said, I'm going with white. She went, I'm sorry, did you say white? I said, yes, yes, white. I'm white. She was like, oh, OK, OK, OK - like white? Yeah....

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That was Trevor Noah in 2013. So what was the difference between how you were defined officially, racially, in South Africa and in the U.S.?

NOAH: Well, obviously, because of our history, everybody was divided into a subgroup, you know? So the minutiae of race was really scrutinized in South Africa. So because my mother is black and my father's white, I was classified as colored, which is strange because that means technically according to the law at the time, my mother, my father and myself all had different privileges according to the law and would be treated differently, you know, if we're arrested - or defined what schools we could go to, what areas we could live in. So, yeah, so that was - I mean, that's always something that I mess around with 'cause it's all a ludicrous system, you know? I mean, a lot of people were hurt during that time, but you also have to acknowledge how crazy and ludicrous it was.

GROSS: You have a bit that you did in front of a South African audience at the Nelson Mandela Theater that's recorded in which you do something very similar about having to open an account and fill out your race. And even though it's post-apartheid South Africa, you still have to fill out your race. So what's your understanding about why you have to fill out your race either in the U.S. or South Africa now?

NOAH: Oh, well, the story I told in South Africa was the American one because you have to - that's something that we got rid of on a lot of our forms. That was, like, a big thing that we just decided not to do. We said there's no reason for race to be on a form. In America, I understand - it was explained to me that the reason that happens is so that there would be no segregation, funny enough, so that there would be no discrimination. So when you were filling out forms for bank accounts and for - they wanted the racial breakdown so that they could go back and then analyze the statistics to make sure that there was no implicit bias. And ironically, that sort of creates a bias, which is very strange. I mean, it's funny and it's sad at the same time. But, yeah, we don't have that on our forms. It's not something that you fill in.

GROSS: So were you taken aback when you realize you're no longer in apartheid South Africa but you have to write down what your race is?

NOAH: Oh, yeah, but I think I was more surprised by the fact that you can choose whichever one you want...

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: ...Which is entertaining to me. I always tell my friends, I'm like, why doesn't everyone just check white? Just check white and see what happens in the system. What's the worst that could happen?

GROSS: So when you started doing comedy - which was when? What year are we talking?

NOAH: I started comedy - 2005 I want to say. Yeah, 2005, 2004 - somewhere there.

GROSS: So apartheid was already over. Were you performing in front of black and white audiences? Were the audiences mixed?

NOAH: Yes, yeah, the audiences - one thing South Africans rushed to do as soon as segregation came down is South Africans rushed to meet each other, you know? That was a beautiful thing about it is that a lot of people do want to integrate. A lot of people do want to but it's just - the question is how? And one thing that was great about comedy was it presented people with the how. It gave them a place to come together and laugh.

GROSS: So what were some of the subjects that you talked about in your early comedy when you were first in front of diverse audiences?

NOAH: First it was - I guess it was just stories. I relayed stories of my life, things that I was going through - observational comedy, anecdotal stuff. And then I spent a lot of time talking about what was happening in society, you know, because I've always been in the middle. So I've always felt one thing I suffer from and I also feel is my gift is the ability to see the other side. I, you know, I grew up in a world where people were very, very, very angry and hated a lot of white people, if not all white people. And I would have to speak up to my friends and say, hey, I know white people that are really cool, you know? My dad is one of them. And so because of my dad, I met his friends and people like him who were great. So I can't put all white people in the same bucket. And by that same token, I would meet white people who would be terrified of black people. And I'd have to explain to them, I'd be like, hey, you can't think like that. You can't hold these views because you are generalizing everybody. So I've always been on both sides.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." Let's take a short break, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." So racial identity is a big part of your comedy when you're doing stand-up. Your father is white, your mother is black. Your father is, I think, of Swiss and German ancestry - do I have that right?

NOAH: Yeah, he's Swiss.

GROSS: And your mother is Xhosa?

NOAH: Xhosa.

GROSS: Thank you. I don't think I can do that (laughter).

NOAH: (Laughter).

GROSS: And I know your mother was jailed - briefly, I hope - in South Africa, I assume for opposing apartheid - for doing some kind of dissenting action?

NOAH: Yes. Well, the dissenting action was being with a white person.

GROSS: Oh, that's why she was jailed?

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: Was the white person your father?

NOAH: Yes, he was. Yeah.

GROSS: Was he jailed for it, too?

NOAH: No, no, no, white people didn't get jailed for that. That was - white people were warned and asked not to do it again. But then if you were a black person caught fraternizing across color boundaries, then you'd be arrested. But my mom opposed the system as a whole. So she never let that stand in her way. You know, and I think I pick up a lot of - I have a lot of my mom's demeanors that she never even - even when she told me the story, she was never angry. She just went, it's a stupid thing, and so I refused to listen to it. But she never came at it from a place of anger. If anything, she defied it, and she didn't give it the credibility that it was trying to create in the world. And so that's something that I inherited from my mom was that in my family we were just - we're not quick to anger. If anything - you know, I mean, obviously there are moments where you find things ridiculous or ludicrous, but not quick to anger - rather, find a way to laugh about it or to minimize it using humor.

GROSS: Were you born yet when she was jailed?

NOAH: Yeah, yeah, I was.

GROSS: How old were you?

NOAH: I was everything from 3 years old all the way through to 6 years old.

GROSS: She was jailed for three years?

NOAH: No, no, no, I'm saying during that time period. No, no, no, she was jailed for a month here and there, and then, like, for a weekend or for a week, and so on. But I was so young I didn't really notice it.

GROSS: She kept going in and out of jail for being with your father?

NOAH: Yes, yes, yes, but it wasn't just her. I mean, this was a common occurrence. This was the state of the nation at that time, is that many people of color would get arrested for what today is not considered a crime in most places in the world. It was just randomly made-up laws.

GROSS: So your parents couldn't live together. That would have been illegal.

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: And they couldn't marry. That would have been illegal.

NOAH: That's correct.

GROSS: So how were they able to have any kind of relationship?

NOAH: Well, I guess they just went for it, you know? I always joke and say that, you know, my mom was just crazy and she said, I don't care about the law. She was like, I want a white man and that's that. And my dad, you know, you know how the Swiss love chocolates so (laughter) that's the two of them in a nutshell. They went for it. And that's really what the story was in South Africa. As much as there was the people, there were the people on the forefront fighting, really every movement is also - I guess it's also underwritten, to a certain extent, by the people who undermine the restriction or the laws that restrict people by just refusing to adhere to those laws. They just - in their own small way, everyone is opposing what is happening.

GROSS: So they couldn't live together. Where did they live and where did you live?

NOAH: Well, I lived with my mom. So the way it works in South Africa is you're allowed to downgrade. So you could go - you could almost forfeit your rights and go live in an area that was deemed inferior to the one that you're allowed to live in. So I was living with my mother in Soweto and my grandmother and the rest my family. And then my father lived - he lived in the city center. And so I guess there were times when my mom would sneak us in to go meet and hang out as a family when we could. But for the most part, that's where I spent most of my time.

GROSS: So describe what your neighborhood in Soweto was like when you were growing up.

NOAH: Oh it was wonderful. It was electric. You know, it's a - even today, Soweto is a - it's a beautiful community. You know, everyone knows everybody's names. You know, there's just a sense of togetherness. And I think because everyone was going through the same thing, it was a shared experience. It was - it didn't feel like it was suffering. You knew that there was a cloud hanging over a nation, but there were lots of moments of joy within that time period. So, you know, the streets were dusty. There weren't many tarred streets. You know, the houses were very modest because the government would allocate land and that's where you could live. So everyone found a way to make ends meet. I mean, there were seven or eight of us at one point living in a one-roomed house or two-roomed house at some point. And, you know, we had outdoor sanitation. It was, like, everyone - every four or five houses would share one toilet outdoors, and then you would have one faucet outdoors that you could go and get your water from. And so this is how everyone lived. And because everyone was doing it, then it's normal. So I'm very lucky in that I never look back at it as a tough upbringing because it was the only upbringing I knew. And everyone was doing it with me. So essentially it's like being in a very stringent fitness class. If everyone's suffering together, it doesn't seem so bad

GROSS: My guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." After we take a short break, we'll talk about how his mother was shot by his stepfather. We'll talk about the land mines you have to watch out for doing social and political comedy in the U.S. And we'll hear more of his stand-up comedy. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Trevor Noah, who has been the host of "The Daily Show" since late September. He grew up in South Africa during the apartheid and early post-apartheid eras. His mother is black. His father is white. Their relationship was illegal when he was born because apartheid mandated separation of the races. Were your parents still a couple when apartheid ended?

NOAH: No, no, no, they weren't. They weren't. Well, I think they were - let me think, actually, they were probably until I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. But they remained friends if I guess because they had been through so much that I always knew them the way they were. So I wouldn't call it a split because essentially they were never together. So they spent as much time together after apartheid as they did before.

GROSS: But there didn't need to be a charade anymore. Like, what was the charade that you would have to enact when the family got together under apartheid?

NOAH: Oh, well, I wasn't enacting anything. I was a kid, so I was just living my life. My mom would - she went to very elaborate - through very elaborate schemes. I mean, she would disguise herself as a maid to act like she was working in my dad's apartment so that she wouldn't get caught. She would act like she was she was babysitting me for somebody else. And, you know, it was all these, I mean, very elaborate scams, I must admit - very funny when you think about it because everyone - you know, everyone thinks of, like, a maid outfit as like a very sexual or interesting costume. And yet my mom - she was like this a functional thing I need to get to - to get my family together. So then she was going through all of that, my dad didn't have to do much because he was on the - I guess the right side of the law, as they would say. So yeah - so my mom was doing all the heavy lifting for all of us.

GROSS: So after your parents separated, your mother married a man who became the father of your two brothers. How old were you...

NOAH: Yes.

GROSS: ...When they married?

NOAH: I think I was maybe 12 years old or 13 - yeah, maybe around there.

GROSS: So you've described him as becoming alcoholic and abusive. Did he abuse you?

NOAH: No, no, no, no, my mom was very protective of me. So I didn't suffer, you know, much of that. But I mean, a home that is terrorized by an abusive drunk is terrorized all the same. You know, I feel like we were all in the same boat because we were. But physically, I was spared much of that torment.

GROSS: And what - did he hit her?

NOAH: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is - you know, it's widely documented. And it's something my mom raised me not to be ashamed to speak about because that was always the biggest thing she said was we live in a world where for some strange women are taught to be ashamed of the fact that they have been abused. And then the victims are running around with the shame, whereas we should be shaming those who are the abusers. So yeah - so he hit my mom, and that was the craziest thing is you're living in a world where it happens sporadically. Like, you know, it wasn't an everyday thing but once is enough, you know? But it was a very harrowing experience to go through. And so, you know, the combination of the alcohol and a bad temper led to that environment.

GROSS: She left him and then...

NOAH: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Went with another man. And when he found out about this other man after he and your mother were divorced, he shot her, twice.

NOAH: Yeah, well, my mom didn't leave to go to another man. So my mom completely left the home, moved out with my brothers. I was already out of the home at that time. And she went and set up a new life. And then at that point, one day they came home from church, and then - and then he pitched up and he was drunk. And then he threatened to kill the whole family, including himself. And then he shot my mom twice.

GROSS: In the face and in the back?

NOAH: Yep, that's correct.

GROSS: But she survived.

NOAH: She did. She did.

GROSS: What kind of shape is she in now? Did she have a full recovery?

NOAH: Oh, yeah. My mom is a soldier. And now - I mean, now we joke that she's bulletproof because it was - I mean, it really was a miracle. And the doctors hated using that term, and they were the ones who said it, you know? My mom is deeply, deeply religious, and her and I have always fought about religion over the years. I challenge her on it, and she completely immerses herself in it. But then I mean, when someone gets shot in the head and suffers no brain damage and is alive and needs to go through no surgery and bullet completely passes through the head, then you - (laughter) you almost have to concede. I mean, who was I to say I don't believe in miracles when I've seen this happens in my life? So, you know, we laughed about it, we joked. I mean, that's really the whole mark of my family is, I mean, a few days afterwards in the hospital, my mom was the person to crack the first joke. You know, I was crying by her bedside, and she said to me - she said don't cry. Look on the bright side. She said, now you're officially the best-looking person in the family. So (laughter) you know, so we've - you know, we've overcome a lot because of laughter. I think that's why I love comedy so much. It's because it's the thing that has kept my family going through every single type of adversity.

GROSS: So when you started performing in America, did you have to learn where the landmines were - where the things were where if you said something about it, people would be offended?

NOAH: Yes, definitely.

GROSS: So what was that process like of not realizing that things would be interpreted in a way that you didn't mean.

NOAH: It's a process of trial and error. You work through the material. You talk to the people. It also helps to live here, you know, which is something I could only do with time. So, for instance, in America, there's a huge sensitivity around fat, all right? If you say somebody's fat or if you say - because there's been a cultural of fat shaming and, you know, there's clearly an epidemic, I mean, partly because of the food and just because of the lifestyles and so on that this is now no longer being seen as, like, a choice thing anymore, whereas where I'm from, you would be teased more for being skinny. You know, fat and thin were two sides of the same coin. It was never something that could be held over anyone. So it doesn't hold the same - like, it's not judged as much. It's just a statement of a fact. That's what people go - they go that person is fat, that person is too thin. And then you get laughed at regardless. It was just, like, a thing that you can play with. The same goes for national pride. In America - and obviously I understand because of, you know, the wars that were waged and post-9/11 I guess it increased tenfold - the national pride is very different. So if you go to the U.K. and you insult the British or the British identity, they're very open to that because as a culture and as a society, they've gone hey, we - you know, we have a history of destroying the world and we colonize the world. And I guess they've worked through a lot of that in the way they see themselves is in a very self-deprecating way. Still proud to be British, but they allow those jabs a lot more, whereas in the U.S., you have to be very careful as to how you speak about America to Americans because a lot of people have been told - and you see it every day on the news - that America is under attack. And so people have this culture of we need to defend ourselves. And so these are small landmines that you pick up as you go from one place to the next. You go OK, this is sensitive here but it's not sensitive there. This is a thing that's an issue here but it's not an issue there.

GROSS: In terms of the fat example, I think you might be referring to a tweet that you sent that was criticized. You had retweeted when a woman is loved correctly, she becomes 10 times the woman she was before. And then you added, so she gets fat? That was in 2014. Were you surprised at the response to that?

NOAH: Oh, no, I'm not surprised by the response to any comedy taken out of context. That's = comedy is all about context. If you think about the things you say to your friends or to people you know, if a stranger hears them, they would think you're the most horrible human being in the world, you know? When you know someone, that's when it becomes comedy. That's exactly what comedy is. It's a familiarity that is combined with you breaking down a commonly-held - you know, a commonly-held belief. So I mean, what was ironic about that tweet that you're reading is that was me and my girlfriend at the time - like, that's something that no one even bothered to check. You go who was he messaging? I was speaking to my girlfriend at the time in public, and that was - we were both fat at the time. We had gained a lot of weight. We were both happy. We were both lazy, and so we were joking about it. But people don't bother - they go oh, you were, you know, fat shaming a stranger on the Internet. You're like this is not a stranger. This is somebody I live with and somebody that I love. So - but any conversation taken out of context is - these are things that I know about comedy. That's why comedy has existed for so long in a safe space, and that is in a comedy club. You know, but with the change in social media and sharing and videos and soundbites, we now live in a world where people are part of conversations that they originally weren't really. So you're now overhearing everything that everybody's talking about and you're not part of the conversation.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." Let's take a short break, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." So you came to the U.S. in time for a succession of police shootings of African-Americans that, with the help of cell phone cameras and social media, became public in a way that those kinds of shootings never were before. And it really raised awareness of why so many African-Americans are afraid of the police. So you talked about that in your Comedy Central special "Lost In Translation," and I want to play an excerpt of that. So this is my guest, Trevor Noah.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LOST IN TRANSLATION")

NOAH: Because every day I turn on the TV, it seems like another black person is being shot. So I just want to know how not to get shot.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: You know, I try and learn. I really do. I try and learn. You know, it all started in the lower echelons of enforcement, community watch. George Zimmerman shot Trayvon, the young boy. And the story started off with man shoots boy, everyone was like, yeah, this is horrible. This is disgusting. But then the news, for some strange reason, the next day they just forget and then they start asking other questions - well, why was he wearing a hoodie? What was he doing, and why was wearing a hoodie? And I was like, oh, is that - so that's - so don't wear a hoodie. That's what it is. The hoodie. It's very frightening. You don't know what's going on under there. Yeah. We've all seen Star Wars, it's the creepiest thing ever.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: Yeah. It's the dark side. And so I was like oh, so if I don't wear a hoodie, then I'm safe. No one's going to shoot me if I don't wear a hoodie. But then a few - you cut forward and then the next thing you know, it's Mike Brown in Ferguson, and he gets shot by the police. Unarmed, he gets shot. And they're all like, a man was unarmed and he got shot, and I was like, oh, this is disgusting. And they said but also, he approached the police officer, apparently, and he may or may not have scuffled with - we don't know, but he approached him. And I was like OK, so don't wear a hoodie and don't approach the police. Don't go towards the police. You see police, you go the other way.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: You go the other way from - OK, cool. I got it. So no hoodies, no approaching the police. This is it. I'm learning. But then the next guy comes on the news, Eric Garner in New York City. And there he is, he's standing and the police, they apprehend them and they start choking him. And he doesn't go towards them, he doesn't go - he's standing there with his arms crossed, and he gets choked to death by six policemen. And then they come on the news and they say - and they go well, you've got to understand, for these police - I mean, this was a pretty big guy. He was a pretty big guy. He was scary. He was a really scary, big black guy. And I'm like, OK, cool. So don't be a big black guy, and then you should be fine. Don't be a big black guy, and then I should - and every day, I look in the mirror and I'm like, good job.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: And I'm like, OK, fine. OK, so don't wear a hoodie, and don't approach the policeman, and don't be a big black man. I think I've got it all down. I think - and then I turn on the TV, and then I see Walter Scott, a 50-something-year-old man running away from a policeman, getting shot in the back. Running away from the policeman. And again, the media, for some strange reason, just seems to forget what the main purpose of the discussion is 'cause on day one, they go unarmed man shot in the back. Day two, they're like, who was Walter Scott? Let's find out about it - apparently, he had a charge of assault against him in 1987.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: So he gets shot for it? How hard did he punch the guy that he gets shot for it in 2015?

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: What, did he punch the guy into the future and then he came back to get him? Is that what happened?

GROSS: That's Trevor Noah from his 2015 Comedy Central special "Lost In Translation." Have you been stopped by a cop in America?

NOAH: I have. I have. I've been stopped a few times actually. Yeah. But they were very nice to me.

GROSS: Was this driving?

NOAH: Yeah. It was in California. The officer was - he was really very nice to me. Like, these are - it's so funny when you talk about these things. In a strange way I feel like, you know, like there times when you will share the plight of the person you feel is oppressing you, and it's a very strange thing that happens. You know, it happened in South Africa between the Afrikaans population and the African population. The Afrikaans population felt that they were being oppressed by the British, and so that's why they needed to stage a revolt. And then ironically, they turned around and oppressed the Africans after going through that oppression. And it's funny because sometimes, I feel the same thing is sort of happening in America. It's like a role reversal that then gives you a different perspective, you know? I don't think all police are bad. I think most police are good people that have a very tough job that they have to do every single day, the same way I don't believe that all black people are criminals. Most black people are law-abiding citizens who, you know, are living their lives and have to go through a very tough situation of being perceived as criminals, which we see in studies all the time. And it's ironic that this plight is now shared because, you know, you get police saying we're good. Just because of a few bad policeman doesn't mean we should be labeled. And you're like, that's exactly what black people have been trying to say for years. Just because of a few, you should not label an entire group. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge the fact that these things are issues. You know, just because it is a few doesn't mean that the many don't have to deal with it.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." Let's take a short break, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Trevor Noah, the host of "The Daily Show." You've said that there was a period when you were overweight and there was a period when you were very depressed. A lot of comics feed on that kind of thing. Like, so many comics have dealt with depression and have dealt with all kinds of, like, neuroses and anxieties, and that becomes part of the subject of their comedy. I haven't heard you talk about that kind of thing in your comedy, you know - to talk about those really personal things.

NOAH: I think it depends on where you meet me in the world and when you meet me in the world. Because I'm still new in the United States, the conversation I'm still having is about me being in this world, it's still me getting to know the general audience. In South Africa, I've talked about everything - like everything from the abuse in my family all the way through to depression. So it's about a conversation and it's about a relationship. Because, again, like I said before with context, it's about knowing the person. If I met you and I started talking to you about depression, that's not a very good conversation to have between strangers. But amongst friends, we can approach it from a different place. And so what I - I have different relationships going at the same time all over the world with different audiences. You know, in South Africa, I have a relationship with an audience that's been going for 11 years. In the U.S., I have a relationship that's only been going for four years. So over time, that evolution occurs and the conversation slowly shifts. But it's never been something that I'm afraid to speak about because I find often times, you talk about things, and there's people in the audience who are going through the same thing or feeling the same way. And then you become a mouthpiece for what they're internalizing.

GROSS: And so there's another excerpt of your standup comedy that I want to play. And this has to do with being in a room. And an African-American guy in the room knows that there's an African in the room and he doesn't realize that you're the African. And he's misled by that because you're so light-skinned. He doesn't think that you would be the African. So here's Trevor Noah.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

NOAH: Like I do shows, I've been doing shows around the country - around the world where I've been blessed. And I remember one day, I'm in LA and I'm doing a show. And we're sitting backstage. And this comedian comes in to the backstage area and he's got a list of all the guys that are performing. And so he looks around and he looks at the darkest guy in the corner - just the blackest guy he could find - and he goes, hey, yo, you the dude from Africa?

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: And the guy looks up and he's like, no, man, I'm from Detroit.

(LAUGHTER)

NOAH: He's like, all right. My bad, my bad, my bad. All right, yo, OK, Detroit, yeah, yeah, you - all right, OK, cool. LA, OK, cool, cool, cool. And then he looks at me for a second, does a quick calculation and he's like, all right, all right - yeah. And then he looks and he goes, yo, where you from, man? I said I'm from South Africa. He's like, oh, you the dude? Oh, Damn, man. Damn, all right. Yo, I didn't even know they got - yo, you the dude from Africa? Man, I didn't even know they got light-skinned [expletive] out there, man. Damn, all right. Yo, that's the motherland, man. That's the motherland. And all of a sudden, he just started giving me this speech. He was like, man, you know, yo, man - that's where we got to be, man. That's, you know - that's the motherland out here, man. Yeah, I got to get out there, Man. I got to - yo, I got to go home, man. You heard? I got to go home. Man, you tell them, all right? You tell them. You tell them I'm coming home, all right? And I was like, we're not waiting.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: That's Trevor Noah in 2013. So what is...

NOAH: Here...

GROSS: Yeah.

NOAH: So when I first got to the United States, I mean, this was something I always joked about and joked within was the longing of African-Americans to return to a place they considered home, which was Africa, the motherland. And I always joked about it because as an African, you're going, we're so far apart, we're so different, that this is not your home. This is not - you know? No one's waiting for you here. No one is thinking of it like that. And it was a joke that I played around in because I had no idea how excluded African-Americans feel in America. And that's why I say comedy's all about context because two things happened to me. One, I realized that there was a pain and a pride that was attached to that statement of the motherland, which I took for granted because I'm from the motherland. And the second thing was - and this was probably one of the most painful things. And you can't control this all the time in comedy but you try to. And that was I will never forget the day - there was a white middle-aged man. And he heard that joke. And he laughed, but he laughed in such a mean way. And he laughed and he said, I love it. He said, I love it, Trevor, you know? You know what I love about this is that you showed them that they're not real black people. They, you know, they act like they're suffering, but you can show them. You can tell them what the real black is about 'cause you're from Africa. And you can tell them. And it was the weirdest feeling because I realized in that moment, he had used what I intended to be playful teasing, and he had used it as a weapon. In his world, he was going, I've found something I can use to oppress those who are already oppressed. Like, I found something I can use to hurt people even more.

GROSS: And feel justified in doing it because it's coming out of the mouth...

NOAH: Exactly.

GROSS: ...Of a black man.

NOAH: Exactly. And once that happens, that's something that no comedian really wants. I mean, I - it's funny 'cause Dave Chappelle is a friend of mine, and we talked about that. And he told me stories of how that broke his heart as well when people, you know, felt that they could run around saying the N-word because he said it and they were like, no, no, I'm just saying Dave Chappelle's joke. I'm not saying - you know? And he was like, I'm not giving - this is not - it wasn't supposed to be a license for you to go out and hurt other people using me as an excuse. It was me expressing myself for my audience. And so that was something that I came to realize is that you have to be careful. You don't have full control over it. But you have to be careful because what you may create as something designed to be harmless, could be used by someone else to be harmful.

GROSS: So does that mean that you wouldn't do that comedy bit that we just played?

NOAH: No...

GROSS: You wouldn't do it anymore?

NOAH: ...It doesn't mean I wouldn't do it. But if I did it, I would do it in a way now that I make sure that I don't allow anybody to steal it from me. That's the key thing is not allowing anyone to hijack your message and use it...

GROSS: How do you do that?

NOAH: Well, it's just about - it's funny. It's like people do with the Constitution. It's just - it's about amending it, that's all it is. I amend my comedy. I go, this is open to interpretation. This might be confusing and this might get people fighting unnecessarily. So let me amend my joke so that it is less confusing so they see where I'm coming from and what my intention is. And that's literally all I do. So if you realize something is vague, you have an opportunity to go in and amend it to impart more clarity.

GROSS: Did you amend that routine?

NOAH: I haven't - no, I haven't done - because it's such an old routine, I haven't done it.

GROSS: Right, OK.

NOAH: So, you know? So I haven't needed to go back. But I have amended many routines just because I've learned. You know, sometimes someone will go, hey, that actually means this here or that touches on a different thing in this country. And then I go, oh, and I amend it. I'm never afraid to admit that I'm wrong.

GROSS: Well, Trevor Noah, thank you so much for talking with us. I wish you good luck with "The Daily Show." I've been enjoying it very much. Thank you so much.

NOAH: Thank you very much, I appreciate your time.

GROSS: Trevor Noah is the host of "The Daily Show." The show is in reruns this week, but it returns with new episodes Monday. If you'd like to catch up on FRESH AIR interviews you missed, like our interview with Sue Klebold whose memoir is about being the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters, or our interview with the author of a book comparing the drug cartel's business model with those of big-box stores and fast food franchises or our interviews with Zach Galifianakis, the Duplass brothers and Joel Grey, check out our podcast. You'll find those and many other interviews.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Under Apartheid, Trevor Noah's Mom Taught Him To Face Injustice With Humor." Fresh Air, 18 Feb. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444352042&it=r&asid=f28406d913d91cd29566fb722889803c. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A444352042

HOW TO FILL THE BIGGEST SHOES IN TELEVISION SATIRE
(Oct. 31, 2015): Arts and Entertainment: p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Independent Print Ltd.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
TREVOR NOAH, the South African comedian who recently replaced Jon Stewart as presenter of The Daily Show, is a huge fan of football. "I love the game so much," he tells me. But asking him who he supports elicits an unusual response. "I have no team that I support. I've never fundamentally understood that concept because I fall in love with players and then they leave and I'm still now meant to be indebted to the team? That doesn't make sense because the players are the team. Where Zinedine Zidane went, I followed him. Where Thierry Henry went, I followed him. I'm loving [Anthony] Martial at Manchester United, I still love Luis Suarez regardless of everything. Sometimes people lose out because they're so focused on hating the opposing team that they forget to enjoy and applaud the beauty and spectacle of the game."

Noah's approach to the beautiful game is illuminating since it illustrates both his dislike of partisanship and his optimistic outlook. These factors account for his swift rise to television stardom but they also ensured that his appointment as Stewart's successor on Comedy Central's hugely popular current affairs satire took the US media establishment by surprise.

When we meet at Comedy Central's studio in Midtown Manhattan, Noah is buzzing with enthusiasm and confidence but he admits to being nervous about his new role. To be sure, at 31 he commands a significant following as a stand-up comedian and is hardly a stranger to American TV screens (or indeed British ones as viewers of QI and 8 Out of 10 Cats know well); and he possesses TV credentials, having been the first South African comic to appear on Jay Leno and David Letterman's shows. But the appointment signified a bold change of direction on Comedy Central's part. Quite apart from not being a white American, Noah, unlike Stewart, doesn't revel in being a political obsessive. Indeed, watching him at work, Noah's political take reminds me of Tom Stoppard 's celebrated riposte in a job interview with a Fleet Street newspaper editor who had asked him to name the Home Secretary: "I said I was interested in politics, not obsessed by them." Noah later tells me, "I don't consider myself a political junkie but I consider myself an information junkie, whether it's technology, sports, entertainment or politics."

Since taking over the reins of The Daily Show, Noah has certainly got up to speed on the Presidential race, comparing Donald Trump to an African dictator, interviewing Chris Christie and highlighting Ben Carson's zombie-like tendencies. But while Stewart revelled in meticulous political portraiture - to the extent that his tenure was dominated by speculation that he would himself run for public office - Noah delights in working from a blank canvas.

He identifies himself as a progressive but not a political progressive and has little time for conventional beltway banter: "I find it funny all over the world that we've created this thing where politics is somehow exclusive, reserved for the political elite." In America specifically, he says, "The problem is they're so quick to jump to 'What it means!' 'This is what they said! The soundbite!' that you start to lose context and lose the real conversation you should be having."

Under Noah, The Daily Show is focusing more on pop culture - and will feature more music - but in a way, he maintains, that maps to society. "Look at an argument between Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj," he says. "When you get to the core of that argument, you realise racial undertones, you realise the society we're living in, you realise women's issues come to the fore." If it was a website, his vision for The Daily Show would be more Friends Reunited than Politico. "The show is a friend," he says. "Some people will like it and some people won't. That's what friends are, people that we like. Everyone else we don't like. It doesn't mean that we hate them; we just choose not to be with them. I want the show to be a natural place where we can engage in honest conversations and learn about one another in our friendships."

Noah could do with a few more friends at the moment. The ratings for the month he's been presenting the show are down a third on Stewart's tenure and this during the height of US presidential election campaign season. He is unfazed. "I can never be in control of how much people appreciate me," he insists. "The only things I can control is how hard I work, how honest I am and how much I put myself out there. I would hope that people would appreciate that as they have with stand-up comedy and everything else I've done. When Jon Stewart started, nobody knew [who he was]. Now I'm starting, nobody knows. People have a right to not like me and people have a right to like me but at the same time I want to be enjoying it as much as possible."

Having moved to the US in 2011, Noah now lives in the Upper West Side with his model girlfriend Jordyn Taylor. It's a far cry from his upbringing in Johannesburg, the son of a mixed race couple at a time when interracial unions were barred in South Africa. His mother is of mixed Xhosa and Jewish heritage while his father is a white Swiss-German. It was a far from carefree childhood: his mother was jailed and fined by the South African government and his father moved back to Switzerland.

Yet Noah tells me that the struggle to end apartheid helped to shape his sunny outlook and sharpened his sense of humour. "I've read articles about myself where they say, 'Trevor is overly simplistic and optimistic in his views,'" he says. "Maybe I am, because I come from a place where the impossible was achieved. You could not have a bloodless revolution, you could never have the people that were instrumental in the oppressing and the torture and the killing of black people now be forgiven and be part of the community." He even says that South Africa's greatest modern statesman epitomised his comic philosophy: "Nelson Mandela would tell so many jokes but sometimes I'd see him at a press conference and he'd tell jokes and nobody would laugh because it was Nelson Mandela. How could he after 27 years in jail? I think he realised, why not make a few jokes because in the end that's all you have.

"My best friend's grandmother passed away three days ago and within three minutes of getting the news, we made a joke because that's how we deal with pain. If you can't laugh, you'll want to cry forever. It doesn't mean you dismiss what has happened or you trivialise the information but you find a way to process the information and work through it. That's something I learned in my family and in my country."

Noah began his career on a radio show called Noah's Ark on a youth radio station in Johannesburg. He first came to prominence in the UK with The Racist, his debut stand-up show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012, which was produced by Eddie Izzard. His stand-up routines translated easily to television and Noah was hired by Comedy Central after he impressed them with appearances on late-night talk shows and his guest contributions on The Daily Show towards the end of the Stewart era.

He still performs live, though he was recently caught up in a plagiarism row over using a near-identical line about being a 'racism connoisseur' from Dave Chappelle - who happens to be one of his idols - at an LA event. Lost in Translation, the show he performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in August, will return to London's Hammersmith Apollo at the end of the year. A wide-ranging hour, it covers Cecil the Lion, Ferguson and Idris Elba playing James Bond, among other hot topics.

He is used to controversy. Upon the announcement that he would take over The Daily Show, Noah was heavily criticised for some of his earlier anti-Semitic and misogynistic tweets. "What I've learned in comedy is you go, 'If it doesn't work, what was I trying to say?', he says. "'How could I have said that better?' Then you start to realise that when you're lazy with it which I often am/ was on Twitter, it's because it was this random thing where we wrote whatever we wanted. You start to realise there are ways you have to focus on getting to the heart of the issue. When it comes to, say, insulting Islam, I often ask why? What is your purpose? Just to do it and provoke somebody?

"Within the world of comedy and free speech there is hate speech and you must always be careful not to stumble into that realm. That is something that I am cognisant of. I'm not saying I'll never make a mistake but you have to think, 'What am I trying to say?' There shouldn't be any taboos but you should ask yourself, what I am trying to achieve with this joke? That's when you'll start to see for yourself whether you could use the joke in a different way to make things better."

Noah goes on to confront one of the thorniest questions in comedy circles - where the boundaries lie in causing offence and flouting political correctness.

"The hardest thing to understand is how loaded everything is at the moment," he says. "Everything you say can and will be used against you and that's what I'm learning every single day. Unfortunately what that creates[bar] Well, let me say the fortunate side is it creates a space where we think before we speak," he says, thinking carefully about what he is saying.

"What's unfortunate is it also creates a space where people are afraid to broach any topic or any subject for fear of being engulfed by the masses on either side[bar] People are so afraid that they end up not saying anything at all."

'The Daily Show' with Trevor Noah airs weekdays at 11PM on Comedy Central; 'Lost in Translation' is at the Apollo Hammersmith, 21, 22 December

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"HOW TO FILL THE BIGGEST SHOES IN TELEVISION SATIRE." Independent [London, England], 31 Oct. 2015, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA433168309&it=r&asid=052fed9d80d24946e2605f31d401c2f5. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A433168309

A Newcomer's Global View
Dave Itzkoff
(Mar. 31, 2015): Arts and Entertainment: pC1(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
CORRECTION APPENDEDIn December, Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old comedian, made his debut as an on-air contributor on ''The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,'' offering his outsider's perspective, as a biracial South African, on the United States.

''I never thought I'd be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa,'' he said with a smile. ''It kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days, back home.''

Now, after only three appearances on that Comedy Central show, Mr. Noah has gotten a huge and unexpected promotion. On Monday, Comedy Central announced that Mr. Noah would be the new host of ''The Daily Show,'' succeeding Mr. Stewart after he steps down later this year.

The network's selection of Mr. Noah comes less than two months after Mr. Stewart, 52, revealed on Feb. 10 that he was leaving ''The Daily Show'' after a highly successful 16-year run that transformed the show into authoritative, satirical comedy on current events. (An exact timetable for Mr. Stewart's departure has not been decided, Comedy Central said.)

Mr. Noah, who spoke by phone from Dubai, where he is on a leg of a comedy tour, said he had been given a great opportunity, as well as a significant challenge.

''You don't believe it for the first few hours,'' Mr. Noah said of learning about his new job. ''You need a stiff drink, and then unfortunately you're in a place where you can't really get alcohol.''

The appointment of Mr. Noah, a newcomer to American television, promises to add youthful vitality and international perspective to ''The Daily Show.'' It puts a nonwhite performer at the head of this flagship Comedy Central franchise, and one who comes with Mr. Stewart's endorsement.

''I'm thrilled for the show and for Trevor,'' Mr. Stewart said in a statement. ''He's a tremendous comic and talent that we've loved working with.'' Mr. Stewart added that he ''may rejoin as a correspondent just to be a part of it!!!''

But the decision also invites questions about Mr. Noah's experience and visibility (or lack thereof), and why the network did not choose a woman to crack the all-male club of late-night television hosts.

Michele Ganeless, the Comedy Central president, said in an interview: ''We talked to women. We talked to men. We found in Trevor the best person for the job.''

Ms. Ganeless added: ''You don't hope to find the next Jon Stewart -- there is no next Jon Stewart. So, our goal was to find someone who brings something really exciting and new and different.''

In his standup routines, Mr. Noah comes across as a self-assured polyglot with an international perspective.

As he joked in a 2013 comedy set on ''Late Show With David Letterman,'' Mr. Noah said that he did not like being introduced as a comedian from Africa, as if he represented the entire continent. ''They make it sound like a guy in leopard skin's going to come running on the stage,'' he said.

Mr. Noah said in his phone interview, ''I didn't live a normal life -- I grew up in a country that wasn't normal.''

He grew up in Soweto, the son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, whose union was illegal during the apartheid era. ''My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,'' Mr. Noah said. ''He couldn't be on my birth certificate.''

By the time he started performing stand-up in his 20s, Mr. Noah said he had long been taught that ''speaking freely about anything, as a person of color, was considered treason.''

His globe-trotting spirit (and ability to speak six languages) set him apart in comedy, and he performed widely in the United States between 2010 and 2012, eventually coming to Mr. Stewart's attention about two years ago.

When Mr. Stewart announced his plans to depart ''The Daily Show,'' Ms. Ganeless said that Comedy Central quickly drew up ''a shortlist'' of possible successors ''and Trevor checked off every box on that list and then some.''

''He brings such a unique worldview and a deep understanding of human nature, which makes his comedy so insightful,'' she added. ''He's truly a student of the world.''

Mr. Noah gave no formal auditions for the job, outside of his performances on ''The Daily Show'' and elsewhere.

Ms. Ganeless said the decision was made after she ''huddled'' with Doug Herzog, the president of Viacom's entertainment group, and Kent Alterman, the Comedy Central president of content development and original programming, while Mr. Stewart acted as ''our consigliere through the whole process.''

During this time, fan support emerged for other longtime ''Daily Show'' cast members, including Samantha Bee, who joined in 2003 and is leaving to create a comedy news show for TBS.

A grass-roots campaign also coalesced around Jessica Williams, who has appeared on ''The Daily Show'' since 2012. However, she wrote on her Twitter account, ''Thank you but I am extremely under-qualified for the job!''

Ms. Ganeless said she would not comment ''on any specific names or conversations'' that came up during the search.

She said that ''The Nightly Show,'' a newly introduced series with Larry Wilmore as host, will remain as a companion program to ''The Daily Show.'' Comedy Central's support of ''The Nightly Show'' ''does not waver,'' she said, and that Mr. Stewart remains a producer of that program. Ms. Ganeless said there had not been ''any specific conversations'' about what personnel would work with Mr. Noah on ''The Daily Show,'' but added that ''he respects and admires the team there that has built the institution.''

Mr. Noah said he expected to be criticized and second-guessed long before his first episode as host. ''We live in a world where some people still say Beyonc can't sing,'' he said. ''Clearly I'm not immune to that.''

But in his conversations with Mr. Stewart, Mr. Noah said that he had found a kindred spirit in a fellow comedian who was not much further along when he came to ''The Daily Show.''

''He told me, 'I was where you were when I took over the show,' '' Mr. Noah said. '' 'Nobody knew me. I was just starting out, finding my voice, and that's when I was handed this seat.' ''

''Now,'' Mr. Noah added, ''it's my turn to steer the ship.''

[Video: The Daily Show -- Spot the Africa Watch on YouTube.]

Correction: April 6, 2015, Monday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: A picture caption on Tuesday with an article about the naming of the comedian Trevor Noah as the new host of ''The Daily Show'' on Comedy Central, using information from Comedy Central, carried an incomplete credit and omitted the photographer's middle initial. The picture, of Mr. Noah, is credited to Byron L. Keulemans/GQ South Africa, not just to Mr. Keulemans.

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO: Mr. Noah will step into big shoes on ''The Daily Show.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY BYRON KEULEMANS)

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Itzkoff, Dave. "A Newcomer's Global View." New York Times, 31 Mar. 2015, p. C1(L). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA407634510&it=r&asid=f9f67c113da53bdbe2925da58ba0d2b6. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A407634510

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"Trevor Noah Spent a Week in Jail, and 6 Other Things We Learned from His Memoir, Born a Crime." Vulture, 18 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA470504988&asid=e54890429b5349bdeec6bd589e2895f5. Accessed 10 July 2017. "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. 67+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA470462568&asid=865705d5a6cd573dfdb229e0be19b9ad. Accessed 10 July 2017. Stern, Dave. "Born a crime." Publishers Weekly, 31 Oct. 2016, p. S26+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA470462629&asid=5f81cae6e98fac8294ba3872750e0be4. Accessed 10 July 2017. Seaman, Donna. "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 8. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA467147904&asid=a9ae2420080c21bcacb555d82b345af8. Accessed 10 July 2017. "The South African host of US TV's Daily Show, Trevor Noah, tried to explain to US audiences how Zuma was elected in 2009 without ever being formally cleared by a court of hundreds of graft charges." New African, May 2016, p. 8. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA453917257&asid=c4a6d708111009ae419c091bd6d0275d. Accessed 10 July 2017. "The Cosmo guy: Trevor Noah." Cosmopolitan, May 2016, p. 48. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA449313695&asid=109d9a55d3ba184412095b5766ecb325. Accessed 10 July 2017. Parker, James. "Why we still miss Jon Stewart: the Daily Show host, Trevor Noah, is smooth and charming, but he has yet to find an edge that's equal to the political moment." The Atlantic, Mar. 2016, p. 34+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA444596288&asid=1e035855c185b3d3c02ccb5bcd68880f. Accessed 10 July 2017. Malone, Michael. "Noah: Daily Show must evolve." Broadcasting & Cable, 16 Nov. 2015, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA435355697&asid=b96e2dfdb74cffdf4ca0e33ffecb1d0d. Accessed 10 July 2017. Lynch, Jason. "Trevor Noah unwrapped: this holiday season, the new late night star has a lot to be thankful for." ADWEEK, 2 Nov. 2015, p. 18+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA434320160&asid=5110b4307d070e0489e7df90f1d84327. Accessed 10 July 2017. "Trevor Noah's dream of mass incarceration." Hollywood Reporter, 9 Oct. 2015, p. 38. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA431532298&asid=a5bc8973fb0de17cbbbf339eb45cf107. Accessed 10 July 2017. Steinberg, Brian. "Trevor Noah's 'Daily Show' won't be Jon Stewart's." Variety, 29 Sept. 2015, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA432064040&asid=a15a0a02e4ef5d480a25e737b302f803. Accessed 10 July 2017. "To laugh or cry; Comedy in South Africa." The Economist, 15 Aug. 2015, p. 44(US). General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA425280944&asid=0c87a243293f6fa715784a86f91f77ee. Accessed 10 July 2017. Commey, Pusch. "Je suis Trevor' Noah comes to America." New African, May 2015, p. 42+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA417021448&asid=0f276c8c8c09f36f53de44603f08cf85. Accessed 10 July 2017. Prange, Stephanie. "Inception's Trevor Noah title rides the tide of fame: comedian to succeed Jon Stewart as host of 'The Daily Show'." Home Media Magazine, 6 Apr. 2015, p. 8. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA409238548&asid=14045118ff2ecf42fbc292394352496f. Accessed 10 July 2017. Lusted, Marcia Amidon. "South Africa's fresh face of comedy." Faces: People, Places, and Cultures, Apr. 2012, p. 20+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA294628796&asid=9132b33d769b93812f63b3373fa94602. Accessed 10 July 2017. Lichtenstein, Jesse. "Soweto's stand-up son." Newsweek International, 25 June 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA293666036&asid=f6243f3ee25453c457f5366b84a29bf0. Accessed 10 July 2017. "Comedian and actor Trevor Noah." Hollywood Reporter, 28 Oct. 2011, p. 22. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA271405717&asid=56552826e36ceccc3533489e87792d32. Accessed 10 July 2017. Neff, LaVonne. "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood." 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  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
    http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/books/2017/02/05/Born-a-Crime-Trevor-Noah-s-cool-and-confident-memoir-of-a-challenging-childhood/stories/201702050040
    Word count: 704

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    Trevor Noah.
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    'Born a Crime': Trevor Noah's cool and confident memoir of a challenging childhood
    Will Ashton
    11:00 PM
    Feb 4, 2017

    As Jon Stewart’s replacement on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah is still finding his voice. He’s a cool, confident and boyishly charming late-show host, filled with compassionate insight and a unique perspective on infuriating current events, but the South African comedian lacks the clear tenacity, defiance and sheer indignation that made Mr. Stewart such a stalwart.

    Time will treat him well, though. Mr. Noah only grows more dynamic by the week. But if cable television fails him, the world of literature will remain a firm ally. His extraordinarily heartfelt, compulsively enriching “Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood” is a hell of a memoir.
    "BORN A CRIME: STORIES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILDHOOD"
    By Trevor Noah
    Spiegel & Grau ($28).

    With his debut book, Mr. Noah produces a striking, evocative, constantly surprising, tremendously heartbreaking, persistently funny and absorbing true-life account, one that never fails to capture his clear-eyed conviction, echoing pathos, sharp perception and sense of humor.

    Through accounts both hilarious and troubled, Mr. Noah explores his early childhood, awkward teenage development, impoverished upbringing and complicated father relationships with boldness and restraint. That the stories themselves are as eloquent, pensive, profound and sometimes downright miraculous as they are reads like an added bonus — although, in reality, these wrenching tales are paramount to its unwavering success.

    Although Mr. Noah’s life story is beguiling, bewildering and typically demanding, to put it mildly, it’s also refreshingly honest, and constantly lacking signs of melancholy or self-pity. It’s rich in content and scarce in self-righteousness, allowing us to see how comedy didn’t merely keep his family life alive, but flourishing through great difficulties and stunning adversaries. It’s a celebrity autobiography like few others in that regard. It celebrates the humor and the tragedy in equal measures, never forgetting the line that draws them together.

    “Born a Crime” is just as much the story of Mr. Noah’s mother as it is his own. Her life — more unbelievable than anything experienced by her son — is a dedication to Mr. Noah’s persistence and defined elegance. They are one in the same, and they’ve traveled far and overcome many obstacles. She believes Jesus deserves thanks; Mr. Noah believes the source is more earthbound. Whichever the case, they are stronger together and through one another. There’s not a page where Mr. Noah’s love and gratification can’t be felt. It’s a tribute as meaningful as it is beautiful. Together, the mother and son are one.

    His mother’s influence is one of understanding, commitment and never-ending adoration and ridicule. Even if Mr. Noah’s journey is filled with doubtful scorn, his recollections are never less than empathetic and moving. He is the man he is today because the women who guided him made him. That’s something read and felt throughout this book and “The Daily Show” equally.

    “Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” the mother tells an impressionable young Trevor. “But don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold onto it. Don’t be bitter.” Indeed, although Mr. Noah’s past is filled with ongoing tribulations, the author never looks back in pity. Even regret is painted as a worthy sacrifice, a chance to grow into a better man.

    Trevor Noah was “born a crime” because he was a mixed-race boy in an apartheid state. Perhaps it’s only fitting that this book should be so arresting. “Born a Crime” is learned and loved, elegant and empowering. It’s an astonishing nonfiction debut not to be matched soon. Trevor Noah is a rich storyteller, with only more to share. Let’s hope that more stories will end up on the page soon. Mr. Noah might be defined as “The Daily Show’s” new host, but his writing might cement his legacy.

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