Here's the South African Book We're Reading Next

The timing of our book club vote is serendipitous as it coincides with the Black Publishing Power Initiative, an initiative we support which encourages everyone to buy 2 books written by black authors this week to help close the gap on racial inequality in the publishing industry. The initiative was created by Amistad Books, an imprint created in 1967 making it the oldest publisher dedicated to uplifting black & multicultural voices.

We’ll be participating & urge you to do so as well to help shine a light on black authors whether you’re buying the book chosen by the club below or a book from your favorite black author. (If you need some suggestions, the other books from our South Africa list are a great place to start as are the books in our Global Reading List from Ghana & Sudan among other countries.)

If you’re buying ebooks, Amazon’s perfect, but if you’re buying a paper-based copy, we’d suggest getting your reads from a black-owned independent bookstore. Check out the lists of stores here: US bookstores | UK bookstores | Canada bookstores

BUT WHAT BOOK DID THE GROUP PICK TO READ NEXT?

“The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. 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 are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during a 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. ”
 “What makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with all its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism…What also helped was having a mother like Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah…Consider Born a Crime another such gift to her—and an enormous gift to the rest of us.” —USA Today

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Happy reading!