Born a Crime

Initially, Patricia's choices were determined by the limitations of South Africa's race-mixing policies. Under the segregationist laws of the apartheid era, all race-mixing was illegal. This means...

When Trevor was growing up, black and colored people in South Africa had few opportunities. They lived in a society that constantly reminded them that they could never achieve what white people...

Trevor and his mother, Patricia, used their fluency in a variety of languages to fit in with different groups of people because, as he says, you can use language to "convince people that they are...

The historical context to Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is the draconian laws of apartheid South Africa. It is thanks to these laws that his birth to interracial parents was considered to be a crime....

I would argue that the central idea or theme of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is that any hardship can be overcome. One of the first things we learn in the story is that thanks to the draconian laws...

In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah describes the apartheid policy of the South African government from 1948 until the 1990s as a lethal combination of slavery, segregation, and displacement, adding, The...

Trevor Noah’s grandmother, Frances, has nothing against beating naughty children. In chapter four of Born a Crime, “Chameleon,” Frances beats Trevor’s cousins, Bulelwa and Mlungisi, after finding...

Temperance Noah was the only somewhat consistent male figure in Trevor Noah's life. According to Noah, "The only semi-regular male figure in my life was my grandfather, my mother's father." He...

The title of Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is critical to understanding how race had an impact on the understanding of himself. He's alive only because his parents both technically committed a crime....

Trevor Noah and his mother end up with two dogs when his mother's coworker offers them up. The coworker's dog is a Maltese poodle who mated with the neighbor's bull terrier. Noah calls this "a...

As you already note, Trevor's Noah's mom has had a huge impact on his life. As Noah says in Born a Crime: "She was my mom. She was my teammate. It had always been me and her together. Me and her...

The Immorality Act of 1927 made it a crime in South Africa for any white people to have sexual intercourse with Black people. By today's standards, this is of course a ridiculous and offensive law....

Humor was a very important part of Trevor's upbringing. Born to a white father and black mother in apartheid-era South Africa, he learned from an early age that humor was a coping mechanism to deal...

Trevor's mother Patricia was 44 years old when she became pregnant with her third son, Isaac. This came as something of a surprise to her as she'd had her tubes tied and so didn't believe that...

As described by Trevor Noah in Born a Crime, the end of the system of racial oppression known as apartheid was unequivocally a good thing. Yet at the same time, he acknowledges that the dismantling...

Born a Crime tells a very personal story, and one that could only come from a particular time and place. For Trevor Noah to effectively tell his story, it is necessary to understand the greater...

Trevor Noah was born in South Africa in 1984, when apartheid was still very much an issue. Noah's mother was Xhosa and his father was a German-Swiss white man, and it was illegal for "mixed races"...

The schools founded by the British missionaries were designed to "civilize" black Africans, to spread the benefits of Western civilization among those who they considered to be the poor, benighted...

Trevor Noah's Born A Crime has value because of Trevor Noah's unique and compelling voice and his wide appeal. Noah, best known for his work on The Daily Show, tells the story of his life under...

A large part of the final chapter of Trevor Noah's autobiography Born A Crime is about the deterioration of Trevor's mother's marriage to Abel. Over the years, Trevor has become used to Abel's...

One day, young Trevor gets into serious mischief. When playing surgeon he accidentally breaks his cousin's eardrum. Everyone else involved gets a good hiding from Trevor's grandmother Frances, but...

In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah provides the unique perspective of a mixed-race South African having grown up during apartheid. His father is of German-Swiss ancestry, and his mother is Xhosa. Under...

The book is a memoir by Trevor Noah. It starts with a description of his mother's life in South Africa during apartheid. During the apartheid regime, black Africans were severely limited with...

Trevor was a difficult child to care for early in his life because of apartheid. During his very early life, his father could not acknowledge his paternity, because having a mixed-race child was a...

In the ninth grade, Noah meets a new student at his school named Bolo. Bolo is entrepreneurial, setting up a black-market business to sell pirated video games and CDs with his partner Daniel. The...

In apartheid-era South Africa, demographic groups were classified to delineate their legal rights and privileges under the stratified segregationist government. Whites were afforded the most...

In Born a Crime, Trevor Noah highlights the effects of a society stratified according to arbitrary racial designations. One of the inconsistencies he notes is the difference between how Japanese...

This prompt is asking you to consider how the author (in this case, Trevor Noah) discusses how he views himself and how other people view him. In his memoir Born a Crime, he explains how he was...