Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah 2019
Read: 2022
Non-Fiction

What a life. Those of you who watch the Daily Show (Jon Steward/Steven Colbert/Trevor Noah) know what intelligence, empathy, humor, and wit and takes to lead that effort. Trevor Noah has all of that.

But I expected this book to be laugh out loud humorous. He finds a way to lighten it, and there’s humor there, but it’s a hard story.  Growing up in South Africa as the secret child of a black mother who grew up in Soweto and a white father of Swiss/German descent is something nobody would wish upon anybody. Noah writes, “During apartheid, one of the worst crimes you could commit was having sexual relations with a person of another race. Needless to say, my parents committed that crime.”

It’s the story of a loving and totally giving mother and a challenging young man for whom life could have easily gone a different direction. But it did not. It is honest, brutal and it gives great insight into Apartheid (and the American South) from someone who we love seeing in our homes during The Daily Show.

You can’t put this book down, and Trevor Noah truly honors his mother while shining a stunningly bright light on all the wrong hardships he and his family endured.

Get it on Amazon here.