Born a Crime
Trevor Noah, 2016
A comedian's account of growing up mixed-race and illegal under apartheid, where survival depended on church, hustle, and a mother who refused to be afraid.
Trevor Noah
Noah was born in Johannesburg in 1984 to a Swiss-German father and a Xhosa mother; under apartheid, his birth was itself a criminal act.
Feels like identity, war and family.
A mother's faith can look like a seatbelt, or a steering wheel.
I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car. It happened on a Sunday. I know it was on a Sunday because we were coming home from church, and every Sunday in my childhood meant church. We never missed church. My mother was—and still is— a deeply religious woman. Very Christian. Like indigenous peoples around the world, black South Africans adopted the religion of our colonizers. By “adopt” I mean it was forced on us. The white man was quite stern with the native. “You need to pray to Jesus,” he said. “Jesus will save you.” To which the native replied, “Well, we do need to be saved—saved from you, but that’s beside the point. So let’s give this Jesus thing a shot.” Books by Trevor Noah
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