Monday, June 1, 2020

Born A Crime by Trevor Noah


I've been wanting to read Born A Crime by Trevor Noah since last summer. So this year, I decided to listen to the unabridged audio version of Born A Crime by Trevor Noah and narrated by the author. 

I'm so glad that I finally got around to listening to Trevor Noah's memoir. It's amazing!! And listening to Born A Crime narrated by the author made it all that much better as he makes it come alive... plus it was wonderful listening to Trevor Noah speak the various African languages in short sentences throughout his memoir.

Trevor Noah definitely captures the essence of what life was like for him growing up in South Africa... Born A Crime by Trevor Noah is well written and very engaging. It was very interesting to learn what it was like to grow up as a mixed race child in South Africa during Apartheid and in poverty. Trevor Noah's memoir had me laughing out loud in parts, sad in other parts, and everything in between.

The listening time for Born A Crime by Trevor Noah is 8 hours, 44 minutes.

Below is a summary for Born A Crime by Trevor Noah from Amazon:
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
I am giving Born A Crime by Trevor Noah a rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 stars.

Until my next post, happy reading!!

5 comments:

  1. His experience growing up in South Africa illuminates in some ways the experiences of black children growing up in this country.

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  2. Great review. I must get to this book myself.

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  3. It was an interesting read ... but I was a bit put off by some of the things he thought was ok to do. Cheers

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    1. I agree with you in that I also was a bit put off by some of the things he thought was ok to do.

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