Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“On Obama's 2017 year-end list. Noah's account of growing up mixed-race in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa is as much structural history as personal memoir — the crime of the title is that his very existence was illegal under apartheid law.”

“Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up mixed-race under apartheid in South Africa reads as a transatlantic echo of Obama's own story: outsider status weaponized into adaptability, humor as survival strategy, a mother's stubborn love as the through-line. Obama has praised it in interviews for its warmth and moral clarity.”