Racism has polluted the common world for decades if not centuries. This inherit discrimination has deeply affected not just those who have been dehumanized by it, but by those who suffer the consequences of having a sibling, or a friend who suffers these very same social issues. This is the exact dilemma that world renowned comedian, Trevor Noah finds himself in, in his iconic autobiography: Born a Crime. Noah details his life as being born a mixed child during a time in which interracial relationships were illegal. Despite all these trials, our protagonist is met with one saving grace in his life: his resilient mother. The following paragraphs will detail the themes, as well as ideas presented in Noah’s autobiography, as well as present the importance of a strong mother in a racist society in the form of my notebook pages.

My first page details my initial thoughts on Born a Crime, as well as central ideas that I picked out while reading. My first idea would be the fact that being a mixed child can put you in unusual/unfortunate situations. My main piece of evidence supporting this idea would be a quote that details Noah being kidnapped, after a tribal enemy of his mother had set eyes on a mixed child. This supports my idea as the kidnappers viewed a mixed child as something they could use against Noah’s mom. Details like this are sprinkled all throughout the book with both white people and black people discriminating against Trevor.

My second central idea was the fact that a strong mother was essential in a racist/unfair society. This would be the idea that I developed the most throughout the course of me reading this book. My primary piece of evidence here would be an excerpt from the talking about the roles that both Trevor and his mother played to stabilize their relationship. I would later elaborate on this idea, finding many more paragraphs that further illustrate Trevor’s development due to his mother’s influence.

The second page I have chosen out is one about rereading, it’s importances, and of course how it ties into our central idea. The importance of rereading is to provide more context, as well as find more connections. This can improve your reading experience by making text less confusing, and maybe even easier to read. The passage I selected was one that I found a connection with.  “My father is a complete mystery. There are so many questions about his life that I still cannot even begin to answer.” I chose this passage as it is one of the few sections of the book that Trevor talks about his father. The predominant figure in his life, once again is his mother, making this both a nice mention of his other parent, as well as another reason as to why his mother, and many more had to be so strong. Rereading can help support ideas, as well as draw more attention to unappreciated areas of a novel, and hence is an essential part of literary analysis.

The third page I have chosen is one that connects back to both of my central ideas. This is the page that I used to prepare for my debate: one in which I would have to defend the claim that “resilience is essential in a prejudiced society.” My evidence for this was a paragraph that detailed Trevor’s mom telling him that even though things were both unfair, and hard, you had to hold on. This was also my theme statement, and I managed to tie this very theme back into both of my ideas.

This connects to my mixed child idea in the sense that Noah wouldn’t be facing such challenges if he was normal, and accepted, whereas it ties into my mother idea, as it his his strong mother that tells him this. This page helped me develop my claims into the future, as well as provided a base that I could rely on.

The final notebook page I have selected is one that ties all of my main ideas together. This is my synthesis page: a sort of summary of this entire project.

I started this page by restating both my central ideas. I then made connections to these ideas with the various pieces of evidence I had picked up while rereading/preparing for my debate, etc. These pieces of evidence were are sprinkled throughout the novel, in which they all helped develop my central ideas. An example of this would be when I used the connection of Trevor’s mom telling him to hold on. This was taken from my debate prep (The third page that I covered in this post) in which it relates to both themes. I then elaborated on Trevor being kidnapped as well as his disciplinary relationship with his mom, both from my original central ideas page. I also added Trevor talking about his father, something that I found from the rereading page.

Finally, I connected all these ideas back to the theme of the book: Resilience is essential in a prejudiced society. This made it so all my thinking was organized properly, as well as distributed among the two central ideas I had been developing throughout my reading of Trevor Noah: Born a Crime.

If you are interested about this book, and would like to read more, I would recommend checking out the Goodreads page for both Born a Crime as well as Trevor Noah.

I would also recommend taking a peek at Thank you for reading my blog post, and I hope this analysis has taught you something. Good luck!