Back
Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2019, Spiegel & Grau) 4 stars

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show …

Review of 'Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

I don't usually use audiobooks, but a friend highly recommended the audio version of this, and I'm so glad that I did. Trevor Noah reads his memoir himself. I daresay any successful standup comic would do a great job of reading their own material, but this has the added benefit of that at times he's talking in other languages, which wouldn't come through on the page half as well.

He grew up poor in South Africa, born during Apartheid. As the child of a Black mother and White father, he was literally a crime. His parents had be creative even to be seen in public with him.

I like reading books that take me outside of the setting and assumptions that I'm used to. This is thoroughly outside of my experience, and one story after another opened my eyes. I'd had no idea about the carefully studied and architect-ed nature of Apartheid, for example. While the book does have many dark things, it's also full of light, and very funny. His mother is a remarkable woman!