Reviews with content warning for Excrement - Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Wow. Just wow. Born a Crime might be the best book I’ve read in the last couple years.
While novel centers around Noah’s childhood in South Africa, he and his mother are a binary star system, revolving around each other. The amount of respect Noah has for his mother, for all her strengths and weaknesses, charms and faults, is apparent in every word. And Noah’s mother is truly an incredible woman, providing wisdom and opportunity even during apartheid.
The story unfolds through witty vignettes, weaving the timeline back and forth, both non-sequential and somehow the way Noah’s tale is best told. Noah’s candid and irreverent voice is what truly puts this book over the top, guiding his audience through the race struggle of post-apartheid South Africa with grace and humor.
It comes as no surprise that Born a Crime is a comedic masterpiece, but it is the heart of the novel that makes it worth the read.

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ekmook's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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yavin_iv's review against another edition

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Got about 2/3 through. Mostly a fine introduction to life in South Africa during/right after apartheid but there's a story around that 2/3 mark where like--(cw antisemitism)

after Trevor explains that Black people in South Africa mostly understood Hitler as one of history's many strongmen, which led to people picking "Hitler" as their sons' European name, he tells a story about how he DJ'd at a Jewish school with his dance hype friend of that name he and the 90s/00s dance chant of "go [name]! go [name]!" for said friend, and a MASSIVE misunderstanding ensued. Trevor and his friend thought the Jewish people were upset about sexualized dances and were being racist, and like doubled down on the chant before cursing them out and leaving. The white Jewish people did go into "you people" territory in confronting them, but it was a bad situation all around between two marginalized groups of people who didn't understand each other or how they were each inflicting hurt. Most of the stories Trevor tells in this book are done so in a humorous light, but this one is just--it's more sad than anything!

I found the attempted humorous framing of this story to be super distasteful.

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befreckledbookworm's review against another edition

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emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Wow.
Just wow.
This book was absolutely amazing.
I’m not a huge nonfiction reader, but I love Trevor’s comedy specials and I’d heard good things about his book, so I picked it up from my school library.
He’s a mama’s boy, but not in the way where he’s thirty-something and living in his mom’s basement. Their relationship is like Lorelai and Rory from Gilmore Girls, kind of. They fight and yell at each other, but in the end, they love each other and can always make each other laugh.

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adoras's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced

5.0

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alenert's review

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challenging funny informative inspiring reflective

4.5

Highly highly recommend on audio. I had the physical copy of this, but had heard such great things about the narration—particularly how Noah seamlessly flips between accents and dialects throughout the story—that I decided to listen instead, and I think it really adds to the experience. In addition to this being both moving and funny, I knew next to nothing about South African history and apartheid and feel like I really learned from it as well.

Update to say the one piece of this book that didn’t sit well with me was the discussion of the Holocaust.

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