Honors Read - The Honors College - University of Maine

The Honors Read

About the Honors Read

Since 2002, incoming Honors College students have been presented with a copy of the year’s Honors Read selection. The Honors Read provides a common experience for students coming to UMaine from across the state, the country, and the world. It serves as a starting point in students’ Honors journey and informs subsequent discussions and explorations throughout their time in Honors.

The Honors Read is chosen each spring by a group of students enrolled in The Honors Read Tutorial. In this class, students consider texts nominated by members of the University community, narrow the list down to eight books, and then carefully analyze and evaluate each text based on criteria they have developed. The deliberation on each text includes consideration of reviews written by members of the tutorial and a discussion with the nominator of the text. In the final weeks of the course, students make the final selection and craft a letter to the incoming students that accompanies each copy of the book.

A photo of the book cover for "Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah.

The 2026 Honors Read

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

First published in 2016, Noah’s memoir has been nominated for the Honors Read multiple times (including twice this year) and was also the runner-up for our 2025 selection. Noah was in fact “born a crime,” the child of an interracial relationship that was punishable by five years in prison. His memoir recounts growing up under apartheid rule–often kept indoors–and the liberation that came after the fall of the apartheid regime. A winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award, Born a Crime was also named one of the best books of 2016 by The New York Times, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist.

We are excited to invite our incoming students to engage with a text that addresses complex and thorny personal, political, and social issues, all through Noah’s distinctive (and often humorous) lens.