The book “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah is a book inspired by the life of Trevor Noah during apartheid. In his book, Trevor talks about the challenges he faced as a mixed race person during apartheid, using humor and stories from his life. Many of the stories explain how racism was portrayed during apartheid and how he managed to still have a fun childhood despite dealing with challenges. There are 2 main themes that I noticed while reading the book; finding identity, apartheid shaping people’s lives and Racism and its injustice. Throughout the book we can see Trevor trying to fit in a certain category (black, white and coloured) since he was mixed race he didn’t quite belong anywhere for 100%, we can also see how apartheid challenged certain groups of people, and how the had to manage despite being on the bottom of the social pyramid.

1. P.O.V and voice analysis + Perspective- this is one of the more detailed lessons I did because the whole book is written is Trevor’s perspective, so there is a lot of details and examples of his perspective in the book. For the voice analysis I wrote a bit about how he uses humor to help with the seriousness of the topics he talks about. Such as “Flufi loves another boy or the letters him and his mom wrote to one another during an argument. (2 pages)
2. Intro’s and hooks- For me this one was one of the more fun lessons as I could just go to a beginning of a chapter and judge based on the introduction of it. During my “search” for interesting introductions, I found myself wondering if a good chapter has to start with a good introduction, and it did. My favorite introductions were: “My mom hated the hood”, “My father was a complete mystery” and “I was nine years old when my mom threw me out of the car”. (1 page)
3. The aesthetic and efferent- During this lesson I learned the meaning of the word aesthetic and efferent and made very detailed notes on the aesthetic. The aesthetic in the story was Trevor’s or his mom’s personal experiences which were connected to the themes of the book. My favorite aesthetics were probably- “his mom surviving in the city without being caught everyday”, “In pictures Trevor was always with another woman that was not his mom” and “Trevor needing to be hidden because he didn’t fall under a certain category”.

My photos of pages didn’t upload