Text copyright © 2019 by Trevor Noah Cover art copyright © 2019 by Bob Bianchini All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. This work is based on Trevor Noah: Born a Crime, copyright 2016 by Trevor Noah. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2016. Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Noah, Trevor, author. | Noah, Trevor, Born a crime. Title: It’s Trevor Noah : born a crime : stories from a South African childhood ; adapted for young readers / Trevor Noah. Description: New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] Identifiers: LCCN 2018027891 (print) | LCCN 2018030775 (ebook) | ISBN 978- 0-525-58218-2 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-525-58216-8 (trade hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-525-58217-5 (library binding) | ISBN 978-1-9848-5189-5 (intl. tr. pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Noah, Trevor, 1984—Juvenile literature. | Comedians—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature. | Comedians—South Africa— Biography—Juvenile literature. | Television personalities—United States— Biography—Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC PN2287.N557 (ebook) | LCC PN2287.N557 A3 2019 (print) | DDC 791.4502/8092 [B]—dc23 Ebook ISBN 9780525582182 Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read. ep_prh_5.4_c0_r1 Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Part I Chapter 1: Run Chapter 2: Born a Crime Chapter 3: Trevor, Pray Chapter 4: Chameleon Chapter 5: The Second Girl Chapter 6: Loopholes Chapter 7: Fufi Chapter 8: Robert Part II Chapter 9: The Mulberry Tree Chapter 10: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and Frequently Humiliating Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part I: Valentine’s Day Chapter 11: Outsider Chapter 12: Color-Blind Chapter 13: A Young Man’s Long, Awkward, Occasionally Tragic, and Frequently Humiliating Education in Affairs of the Heart, Part II: The Dance Part III Chapter 14: Go Hitler! Chapter 15: The Cheese Boys Chapter 16: The World Doesn’t Love You Chapter 17: My Mother’s Life Apartheid History Acknowledgments About the Author For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man. Apartheid—the South African government policy of racial segregation—was genius at convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can control them. During the years of Apartheid, black South Africans outnumbered white South Africans nearly five to one, yet we were divided into different tribes with different languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda, Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi, and more. Long before apartheid existed, these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer. All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges to keep them at odds. Perhaps the starkest of these divisions was between South Africa’s two dominant groups, the Zulu and the Xhosa. The Zulu man is known as the warrior. He is proud. He puts his head down and fights. When the colonial armies invaded, the Zulu charged into battle with nothing but spears and shields against men with guns. The Zulu were slaughtered by the thousands, but they never stopped fighting. The Xhosa, on the other hand, pride themselves on being the thinkers. My mother is Xhosa. Nelson Mandela—the anti-apartheid revolutionary who was imprisoned for twenty-seven years and who eventually became South Africa’s first black president—was Xhosa. The Xhosa waged a long war against the white man as well, but after experiencing the futility of battle against a better-armed foe, many Xhosa chiefs took a more nimble approach. “These white people are here whether we like it or not,” they said. “Let’s see what tools they possess that can be useful to us. Instead of being resistant to English, let’s learn English
