top of page

Born A Crime: Stories From A South African Childhood


Genre: Memoir

Book Type: Audio

Author & Narrator: Trevor Noah

Pages / Length: 304 pages / 8 hours and 44 minutes

Publisher: One World; Reprint edition (February 12, 2019) / Audible Studios

Book Description:

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.


Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.


The stories 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.


Thoughts:

Completely outside my typical genre, and 💯 worth expanding genres for! This book was beyond eye opening! This book was an incredible memoir / collaboration of stories from when #trevornoah was growing up. It contains stories of racism, stereotypes, domestic violence, privilege, segregation, opportunities, friendship, family, identity, hard-work, determination, language, hardship, and perseverance.


Favorite Quotes:

There were so many incredible passages that opened not only my eyes, but my mind and my heart.


🗯 Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says “We’re the same.” A language barrier says “We’re different.”


The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite: convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meet someone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he can’t speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He’s different, less intelligent. […]


However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code, “Wait, wait,” your mind says, “the racism code says that if he doesn’t look like me he isn’t like me, but the language code says that if he speaks like me he… is like me? Something is off here. I can’t figure this out,” (pgs 49-50).


🗯 That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.


I became a Chamaeleon. My color didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you and Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you. (pg 56)


🗯My mom raised me as if there were no limitations on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised me like a white kid – not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, but my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered.


We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited. (pg 73)


🗯 Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.“ He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, “I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being,” (pg 236).


This book was incredibly moving and touched my soul in so many ways. I highly recommend this book. My only “complaint” was that it wasn’t a linear timeline, which for someone who doesn’t typically read biographies, it was a bit harder to follow.


Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Comments


bottom of page