Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah is a stand up comic and host of The Daily Show. This book reflects on his childhood and how it shaped who he is today. It illustrates the hardships of growing up mixed race in post apartheid South Africa.
I have a great admiration for this book. I would never have guessed that a memoir with such heartbreaking stories could also be quite funny at the same time. Noah does an amazing job of telling tales from his impoverished childhood. He paints a picture of his tenacious mother always striving for prosperity and teaching her son to be resilient in a time where he was literally a crime for even existing (being half black and half white). I couldn’t help but continually thinking that the author is about the same age as me, so while he was growing up running the streets, hustling, and being outcaste from almost all social groups because of his skin color, I was growing up without a care in the world. It’s a cruel and inexcusable world we live in, and it’s books like this that serve to remind us how lucky we have been in life.
There were many times throughout this novel that I reflected on how much it reminded me of a real life Power of One, and also how similar the family dynamics were to Hillbilly Elegy. If you liked either of those books, you would probably enjoy this one too!