📚 Book🎭 Teens · Ages 14–17Non-Fiction / Biography

Born a Crime (2016)

About This Book

Trevor Noah was born to a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father during apartheid in South Africa, when their relationship was literally a crime. His memoir weaves together stories of growing up mixed race in a society that had no category for him, from hiding indoors to avoid being seen to hustling pirated CDs in the township of Soweto. Noah writes with the timing of a stand up comedian and the insight of someone who learned to navigate between worlds from birth.

Why It's a Classic

Noah achieves something difficult by being simultaneously very funny and very serious, often within the same paragraph. His descriptions of apartheid's absurdities, like the racial classification system that assigned him different races depending on who he was standing next to, reveal how ridiculous oppression looks when examined closely while never minimizing its real violence. His mother Patricia is the book's true hero, a woman of extraordinary courage and fierce Christianity who defied apartheid, raised her son to think independently, and survived being shot in the head by an abusive partner. Noah's multilingualism, he speaks six languages, becomes both a survival tool and a metaphor for the code switching that marginalized people perform every day. The memoir also serves as one of the most accessible introductions to the history and aftermath of apartheid for readers unfamiliar with South African history.

Fun Fact

Noah's birth certificate listed his father as 'unknown' because acknowledging a white father would have been evidence of the crime that gave the book its title. His mother once threw him out of a moving minibus to save his life during a confrontation with a violent driver, an incident Noah recounts with characteristic dark humor. Before becoming a comedian, Noah was briefly involved in a CD piracy operation and was once detained by police who suspected him of being a car thief because they could not determine his race.

Parent Note

The memoir describes domestic violence, including a shooting, in its final chapters, and this section is deeply upsetting despite Noah's measured tone. There are descriptions of poverty, police violence, and the structural racism of apartheid. Noah uses some profanity and describes teenage criminal activity, including his CD piracy hustle. The domestic violence is described honestly and without graphic detail, but its inclusion is emotionally heavy. It is appropriate for ages 13 and up.