Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah's life began as a crime. Born to a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father during apartheid South Africa, his very existence was punishable by five years in prison. For the first years of his life, he was kept hidden indoors, a secret his mother risked everything to protect.
This is the story of a mischievous boy who grew into a restless young man in a world where he was never supposed to exist. With his mother's fierce determination and unshakeable faith, Trevor navigated the absurdities and dangers of life under apartheid and its chaotic aftermath. She threw him from moving vehicles to save his life, disguised their relationship to evade police, and raised him to believe the world was his to conquer.
From the townships of Soweto to the streets of Alexandra, Trevor learned to hustle, selling bootleg CDs and using language as his superpower to cross the barriers of race. He faced poverty, violence, and an abusive stepfather, but through it all, his mother remained his anchor, dispensing tough love and old school discipline.
Born a Crime is ultimately a love letter to Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, an extraordinary woman who defied a brutal system. Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, this #1 New York Times bestseller blends hilarious comedy with heartbreaking truth, illuminating a dark period in history while celebrating the unbreakable bond between mother and son.
Interesting Facts
His Birth Was Literally Illegal: Trevor Noah was born in 1984 to a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss-German father when interracial relationships were punishable by up to five years in prison under South Africa’s Immorality Act. His very existence violated apartheid law, which is exactly why the book is titled Born a Crime. The law wasn’t amended until 1985, just a year after his birth.
Hidden Indoors as a Baby: Because Trevor’s mixed-race appearance was living proof of his parents’ crime, his mother Patricia kept him mostly indoors during his earliest years. She took extreme measures to hide him from authorities who could have taken him away at any moment. When they did go out, she sometimes pretended to be his maid while a colored woman from her building posed as his mother.
His Mother Threw Him From a Moving Car: One of the most harrowing stories involves Patricia literally throwing nine-year-old Trevor out of a moving minibus to save him from a violent Zulu driver who was verbally attacking her for being Xhosa. The driver’s aggression stemmed from tribal tensions that apartheid deliberately stoked to divide black South Africans and maintain white control.
Number One Bestseller: Published in November 2016, Born a Crime became a number one New York Times bestseller and has sold over three million copies across all formats. It won the prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2017 and an NAACP Image Award, plus it was named one of the best books of the year by major publications including The New York Times, NPR, and Esquire.
Trevor Narrates the Audiobook Brilliantly: Trevor Noah narrates the audiobook himself, performing in multiple languages including English, Xhosa, and Zulu with different accents and dialects. His virtuoso performance earned him the Audie Award for Best Male Narrator in 2018, and the audiobook is considered one of the top-selling, highest-rated Audible performances of all time.
She Chose a Culturally Neutral Name: Patricia deliberately chose the name Trevor because it had no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in his family, and wasn’t even a Biblical name. She wanted her child beholden to no fate and free to go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone without the weight of cultural expectations.
Trevor Spoke Multiple Languages as Survival: Of South Africa’s eleven official languages, Trevor learned to speak Zulu, Tsonga, English, and Afrikaans fluently. This linguistic ability allowed him to become what he calls a "chameleon." He could move between different racial and cultural groups at school and later in business, using language to change how people perceived him.
A Film Adaptation is Coming: In 2018, it was announced that Born a Crime would be adapted into a major motion picture starring Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as Patricia, Trevor’s mother. Noah is producing the film through his production company, Ark Angel Productions.
It’s Required Reading at Colleges: Former First Lady Jill Biden, who is an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College, assigned Born a Crime as required reading for an introductory English course. U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth also cited the book as the inspiration for writing her own 2021 memoir about being the child of parents from different racial backgrounds.
The Title Appeared in Crossword Puzzles: Born a Crime became so culturally significant that its title was used as a clue in the New York Times Crossword Puzzle in early 2017, and has been used two more times since then, in 2019 and 2020, cementing its place in popular culture.
Quotes
“We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.” – Trevor Noah
“People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.” – Trevor Noah
“Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.” – Trevor Noah
“If you’re Native American and you pray to the wolves, you’re a savage. If you’re African and you pray to your ancestors, you’re a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that’s just common sense.” – Trevor Noah
“Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being.” – Trevor Noah
“The first thing I learned about having money was that it gives you choices. People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have.” – Trevor Noah
“We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer.” – Trevor Noah
“Relationships are built in the silences. You spend time with people, you observe them and interact with them, and you come to know them—and that is what apartheid stole from us: time.” – Trevor Noah
“Trevor, remember a man is not determined by how much he earns. You can still be a man of the house and earn less than your woman. Being a man is not what you have, it’s who you are. Being more of a man doesn’t mean your woman has to be less than you.” – Trevor Noah
“Comfort can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling.” – Trevor Noah
“Learn from your past and be better because of your past, but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.” – Trevor Noah
“We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others because we don’t live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another’s pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.” – Trevor Noah
“The hood made me realise that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks after its own. Crime is there when the government is not.” – Trevor Noah
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