“Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It's a strange feeling. You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad, where you either love or hate them, but that's not how people are.”
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
“Don't fight the system, mock the system”
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
“When it was time to pick my name, she chose Trevor, a name with no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family It's not even a Biblical name. “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.”
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
“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. I still live 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.”
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
“In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.”
― Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Shahd’s 2024 Year in Books
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