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. The voice is quick and wry, moving between funny stories and the hard facts of growing up illegal, with family warmth underneath.
Feels like wonder. About identity, war and family.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy comic memoirs that mix family stories with sharp social observation. The apartheid setting includes racism and frightening family moments, so some chapters are bleaker than the jokes suggest.
Why read it
It gives you a funny, unsentimental view of a family surviving a racist system, and a sharp reminder of how law and race shape ordinary life.
A page from the book
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.” 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.
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Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Born a Crime for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy comic memoirs that mix family stories with sharp social observation. The apartheid setting includes racism and frightening family moments, so some chapters are bleaker than the jokes suggest.
- What is Born a Crime like?
- The voice is quick and wry, moving between funny stories and the hard facts of growing up illegal, with family warmth underneath. Feels like wonder. About identity, war and family.
- What should I read after Born a Crime?
- If you liked Born a Crime, try Becoming (Michelle Obama), Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) and Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris).
A taste of the feed
Grief does not stay at the graveside; it follows you to the fridge.
It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful—a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids—and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.
Becoming · Michelle Obama
What a parent's accent does to the shape of a sentence.
My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.
Running with Scissors · Augusten Burroughs
What New York couples stay together for, when the children aren't the reason.
In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.
Me Talk Pretty One Day · David Sedaris
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