Note: Text has been edited for clarity and will not match video exactly.
Audible: How did come about?
Trevor Noah: There were certain stories I just wanted to tell. I had stories from on stage, from life, from growing up in South Africa during apartheid — and from growing up post-apartheid with a father who was white and Swiss and a mother black and Xhosa. I wanted to tell a lot of these stories and, on stage, I was strangely limited within the confines of comedy. That is, the people need to laugh as much as possible.
Many times, I would tell friends and acquaintances these stories and they’d go, “Why don’t you share this with the world?” I was like, “But where? Where do you share it with the world?” One day, a good friend of mine said, “You should write a book.”
Initially it was just an idea of writing a collection of stories. It was just putting them together and seeing what came of it. I said, “I’ll write all the stories and I’ll see where it takes me.”
A: How did you ultimately decide on the narrative structure?
TN: I went through different phases. I thought, “Is it a memoir?” Then I thought, “I’m too young for that.” I thought, “Would it be a random collection of essays?” I came to realize, in the end, it essentially became almost like a love letter to my mom.
I grew up with her, I spent most of my time living with her. We were teammates, traveling through life together. It was this journey of new, constantly. That’s really what the narrative of the book became. It was our coming-of-age journey together for a mother and son.
A: While writing, did you have the audiobook in mind?
TN: I think very early on I realized that I wanted to add an audiobook component, because as a comedian — as a performer — spoken word has always been my primary form of communication. If anything, the audiobook is more natural to me than the written book. That was a welcome addition to the process of writing my first book.
A: Did you know from the beginning that you wanted to narrate the audiobook?
TN: Yeah. I always wanted it to be me, you know? When I listen to an audiobook, I like to hear the voice of the author. Especially if it’s someone that I may know who exists beyond just the book. It’s nice to have that face and that voice and the idea. The most important thing for me was, when I tell the stories, I try and embody the characters.
The one thing that you get from the audiobook that you can’t get from the physical copy is the character. I love performing, I love doing voices, I love embodying my family members, my friends, people I encountered. So if anything, I always would have intended to read my own audiobook because it is, very literally, my own words.
