Born a Crime

Trevor Noah · 2016

Memoirnonfiction

Banned in 1 country

Trevor Noah's 2016 memoir recounts his childhood in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa as the son of a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father — a union that was literally a criminal offence under apartheid law, making his birth itself the crime of the title. Warm, funny, and harrowing in equal measure, it traces his mother's extraordinary resilience and his own journey from poverty in Soweto to international comedy. Challenged in some US educational contexts for its treatment of religion.