Trevor Noah is a comedian from South Africa who has been gaining international popularity, especially in the USA. His memoir, Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, is written with a sense of humor, but some of the stories he relates are decidedly not funny.

Noah weaves together his personal family stories with the political realities of South Africa during his childhood. He shares how he, a mixed race child, proved his parents’ violation of the law prohibiting sexual relations between native Black Africans and white colonists or immigrants. He shares his mild discomfort at being considered white among native African communities. He describes how he and his mother were not allowed to walk together in public for much of his childhood. He explains that many Black African communities never completely trusted him because of the color of his skin.

To an American, some of Noah’s accounts of light-skinned privilege are unfathomable. He would have endured very different stereotypes had he been raised in the USA, where he would have been considered a Black boy from the day he was born. This is part of what makes the book compelling to an American audience. Racial tensions have been severe in South Africa for centuries, but often in ways that are different from the racial tensions that exist in America.

Noah shares poignant stories of faith and work and family life, and does so in a way that invites the reader to participate fully in the story. His narrative techniques are so relatable, the reader will begin to wonder how they would have responded or reacted in a similar situation. Many of Noah’s family and friends come alive in his descriptions of them and their actions. His own actions are not always ones that the reader would choose to take, but he explains and describes his decisions in such a way that the reader must at least empathize with the choices that Noah made in his youth.

I do have one a confession to make: I didn’t read a paper or digital copy of this book. I listened to it on Audible. And I would encourage everyone who is not an expert in the languages of South Africa do the same! Noah narrates his own book, which makes the storytelling more meaningful. Born A Crime includes many phrases in Xhosa, the language of Noah’s mother’s family, as well as some of the other languages spoken by folks in South Africa. To hear those words pronounced correctly contributes deeply to the storytelling.

I highly recommend Born A Crime to anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of how humans interact with one another, and how laws and politics sometimes direct those interactions. The stories that Noah shares in this book are particular to a mixed-race Xhosa boy in South Africa in the 1980s and 90s, but the lessons he learns can be broadly applied.