A review by travelinglovereads
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

5.0

Name a book that made you laugh out loud, and so hard. I’ll wait. If you’ve read this - let me know so we can talk about our favorite parts!

Plot: Memoir of Trevor Noah’s life as he survived the apartheid in South Africa, and essentially was born a crime. This book covers what it was like for him to be born as a child to a black woman and a white man during the apartheid. How he made money to support himself, and how he floated around to different groups of different economic status’ as he tried to find himself.

My thoughts: I don’t know if I have loved a book more. I know I keep saying that I love all these books, but when I tell you that *this book* shook me to my core, I mean it. There’s one other book that I’ll talk about later that also did this, but this is the first book that I read all 2020 that deserves 10 stars.

Trevor Noah at Storytelling = 10/10. I honestly cannot recommend this book enough. This book taught me more about the apartheid, about South Africa, and it’s culture. It made me admire who Trevor Noah is today, but also not surprised that he is who he is. As a child, he was smart, he was a hustler, he was adaptable, faced struggle, and still preserved.

Although I don’t think it was his intention, I also felt that this book was a love letter to his Mom. They went through a lot together, and like him, she seemed resilient to all the struggles she faced.

This book made me laugh out loud, parts of it stressed me out because I wasn’t sure how certain situations were going to play out, and other parts of it made me feel so happy. I just got this book on Audible because I heard it’s great to hear him tell the stories. I can’t wait to listen again!

One last thing, Fufi <3