Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love.

There was great trepidation felt in our household when Jon Stewart announced that he was retiring from The Daily Show. Even more when he announced that his replacement was Trevor Noah. Trevor Noah? Never heard of him. What little I could find out about him didn’t help matters. He was so young! But we watched, and were pleasantly surprised. Because, though young, Noah has a maturity about himself that even comes through the comedy. It’s that same mix of youth and maturity that makes this book such a great read. Not only did I get a deeper understanding of what life was like under Apartheid, but I could “hear” him as I read, as if he was standing there personally telling me all these stories of his life growing up.

Like so many comedians, Noah had a hard childhood, but he finds the best that that life has to offer and runs with it. The essays are unfailingly honest, and laced with a humor that Noah can’t seem to help falling back on. I liked Trevor Noah before; I’m a huge fan now.



Mount TBR 2017 Book Links

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Lost Girls
2. Hillbilly Elegy
3. Our Revolution
4. Requiem for Athens
5. Dark Angels
6. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
7. The Last Kingdom
8. The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and a 50 Year Search
9. And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
10. Now Face to Face
11. Our Endless Numbered Days
12.Dean and Me: (A Love Story)
13. This Changes Everything
14. Richard III and the Murder in the Tower
15. The Apocalypse
16. The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999
17. The Snow Child
18. Stonehenge
19. Royal Blood: King Richard III and the Mystery of the Princes
20. To the Bright Edge of the World
21. How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends
22. The Hollow Man
23. The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction
24. Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood