Trevor Noah: Born a Crime is a nonfiction autobiography by Trevor Noah. It tells the stories of when he was growing up during late apartheid in South Africa, and the fall out afterwards it was eradicated.

Throughout the book Trevor tells stories that occurred to him during his childhood. To little things like pulling all the projector lenses in catholic school, to burning a house down, his life was filled with events. Not only telling stories, but also giving insight to outsiders what happened during apartheid, and what it was like to be born against the law, a mixed person.

Some central ideas or messages Trevor conveys is that no matter how hard it gets, life still goes on. Though he was young during these apartheid stories, he shows through his mouther how determination got her in a job position, a secretary, many black people wouldn’t even touch. He tackles these stories with a sense of humor, making these stories something to laugh about instead of linger on. The first thing he says in the book, Chapter 1, that apartheid was a perfect racism. When people were already put against each other, it’s easy to take advantage of that hatred to turn it into something more. How the white people came to a land of battling tribes and colonized the land in their favor. I think this is pretty powerful, as when you’re angry and against each other, you’re not as strong as being together and connected. This also shows a bit more in the second chapter, Cameleon, where he used language to connect with more people. He and his mother talking in different languages to people, and usually it got what they wanted. Connecting with people makes people feel safe, and together people are stronger together.

Page 19, Setting.

• On this page, I did it while we were doing the setting one pager in our groups. The chapter itself was pretty short so it was easy to find the explanations the settings. Though for the last two, Eden Park and Soweto, it took a little bit. Since I’m using the digital copy of the book, I used the search tool to comb through the book to find the backgrounds to each place. The page actually helped me understand the story a bit more since sometimes I struggle with seeing what is happening in the book.

Page 11, Who is The Author?

• I got the information by skimming his wikipedia article but also his official website. The website listed all of his talk shows and a bit of the book, though a lot of information came from wikipedia. This page honestly was a good start to looking at what his views would be (the later pages) and getting to known about the person behind the book.

Page 8-9, Aesthetic vs Efferent

• One of the earliest pages I did so it was in the first few chapters in the book. Though it wasn’t as hard to do since a lot of the book is facts and the story details follow right after. It was kind of hard to split them apart at first but eventually I understood the differences.