Named one of the best books of the year by Michiko Kakutani, New York Times • USA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • NPR • Esquire • Newsday • Booklist
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.
304 pages (November 2016)
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Reading Guide from BookMovement.
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Title Read-alikes: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib; You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: a memoir by Sherman Alexie; Lost and Found in Johannesburg: a memoir by Mark Gevisser; Believe Me by Eddie Izzard; The Education of Kevin Powell: a yong boy's journey into manhood by Kevin Powell; You Can't Touch My Hair and Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson; Bare Bones: I'm not lonely if you're reading this by Bobby Bones; The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish; Black Fortunes: the story of the first six African Americans who escaped slavery and became millionaires by Shomari Wills; Becoming by Michelle Obama; and Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson.
