If you liked
Books like Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah
Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up mixed-race in apartheid South Africa, where his own existence was literally illegal, anchored by his fearless, funny, deeply religious mother. It is hilarious and gutting in the same chapter. If you want more memoir that does both, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
Educatedby Tara Westover
“Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.”
Becomingby Michelle Obama
“Becoming by Michelle Obama 2018 review. Michelle Obama's memoir, from her South Side Chicago childhood through the Obama White House. The political memoir that sold seventeen million copies, and the one that genuinely earns its bestseller status.”
Crying in H Martby Michelle Zauner
“Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 2021 review. Michelle Zauner's memoir about her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021.”
A Promised Landby Barack Obama
“A Promised Land by Barack Obama 2020 review. The first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoirs, covering his early political life through the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The most thoroughly written contemporary presidential memoir in modern American letters.”
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankindby Yuval Noah Harari
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari 2014 review. A single-volume history of Homo sapiens from cognitive revolution to the present. The popular-history bestseller that defined the 2010s book-club shelf, with the trade-offs that ambition requires.”
Atlas of the Heartby Brene Brown
“Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown 2021 review. An illustrated mapping of eighty-seven distinct human emotions organized into thirteen emotional landscapes. Brown's most ambitious popular-psychology book.”
FAQ
Common questions about Born a Crime read-alikes
- What is the closest memoir match?
- Educated by Tara Westover. Both are coming-of-age memoirs about escaping the circumstances you were born into through sheer will, both center a complicated parent, and both are almost impossible to stop reading. The strongest pairing here.
- I want a memoir of public life and identity.
- Becoming by Michelle Obama and A Promised Land by Barack Obama cover growing up, finding a voice, and navigating a world not built for you, at a different scale of fame. Becoming is the closer match to Born a Crime's personal warmth.
- I want the grief-and-family, mother-shaped kind of memoir.
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner centers a mother the way Born a Crime does, through food, love and loss. Quieter and sadder, but it shares the beating heart of Noah's book.
- I want to understand the bigger systems behind a story like this.
- Sapiens for the species-scale view of how societies sort people, and Atlas of the Heart for the vocabulary of the emotions a memoir like this stirs up. Both widen the lens after the personal story.
The original