Lucas Stoffel

Born a Crime Book Review: The title of Trevor Noah's memoir is not a metaphor. Under South Africa's apartheid laws, relationships between Black and white people were illegal. His mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is Xhosa. His father, Robert, is Swiss-German. Trevor's very existence was a crime punishable by prison. His mother could have been jailed for having him. When they walked down the street together, she had to pretend he wasn't hers.

This book won the Pulitzer and honestly it deserved all of it. Percival Everett takes Huckleberry Finn, a book most of us read in school, and retells it from Jim's perspective. Except here, his name is James, and he's been code-switching his entire life. Speaking one way around white people, another way when they're not listening. That device, that simple idea, completely transforms the story. Twain wrote Jim as a sidekick. Everett writes him as the smartest person in ever