A review by charliegirl21
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

5.0

I avoided this book for multiple years because celebrity memoirs are generally trash. Plus, every person I talked to told the same anecdote about how race impacted the family dynamics of his parents and him as a kid, which was interesting but not super intriguing. Well, my pretentious skepticism kept me from reading one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It is a mix of adolescent childishness tempering powerful social commentary on education, history, racial constructs, and dysfunctional families. It’s weird to laugh out loud while also shaking my head at the injustice of it all. Plus, it really does a great job encapsulating this complex thing we call familial love. It is a love story to his mom in a lot of ways, and he brilliantly casts a complex woman succeeding and failing in very honest ways. Loved it.