​Xheni Alibashi

Ms.Knudson

12 LC

17 January, 2020

Book review:​ Born A Crime​ by ​Trevor Noah

“The world doesn’t love you. If the police get you, the police don’t love you. When I beat

you, I’m trying to save you. When they beat you, they’re trying to kill you” (Noah 179). One

quote, which essentially describes the essence of the whole novel. Trevor is literally ‘Born a

Crime’ and has to hide throughout most of his life, in order to not get caught by the police and

eventually get thrown to an orphanage or get beaten to death. He lives in a home where he is

disciplined the hard way, my his mother, Patricia. She claims that whenever she lays a hand on

him, it is for his own good, to teach him a lesson, and later he learns that this is what his life

revolves around; being beaten by his mom or being caught and beaten by the police. In his

memoir, Noah takes the reader through his life by using imagery as his main tool to guide his

audience through his journey. Although his story is incredibly heartbreaking, considering

aparteid, the poverty his family was going through, and the police violence towards people of

color, Noah manages to tell his story with a great deal of humor. He goes on to describe what his

daily life looked like in South Africa under that regime and the difficulties that him and his

family faced. Although it was hard for Noah’s mother to bring food to the table, it was important

for her that her son gained the knowledge needed to go out to the world, a world that was full of

hatred and descriminatrion. He constantly makes fun of his mother sayings and actions. On one
of the first chapters of the book, he describes a scene where him and his mother are riding a bus

to church and the driver, once his mother reveals she is Xhosa (African tribe), starts to call her

and Trevor names and threatens to harm them in a way. She tries to find a way to escape from

the bus and decides to grab her son and jump out, which results in slight injuries for them both.

Although in the eyes of a reader this would sound traumatic or scary, Noah does not take himself

seriously and decides to describe it with humor and satire.

Besides this novel being written in a very funny and entertaining way, it also provides

other things for readers that might not know much about aparteid and further educates them on

african culture. Marienne Thamm, who is an accredited writer of ​ The Guardian, ​writes and

article about her experience in reading Noah’s book as well as what his life looks like now, and

makes the following statement, “​Born a Crime is an engaging, fast-paced and vivid read,

traversing Noah’s early childhood, confined by the absurdities of apartheid, where he could not

walk openly with either of his parents, where he was often closeted inside his grandmother’s

two-roomed home, where he was mistaken for white, through to his troubled years at school, his

brief incarceration and to his budding success as a hustler selling pirated CDs and DJing at

parties” (Thamm).​ What Thamm states in that phrase is a perfect description of the parts that

take on during Noah’s life and what events of his life he exactly talks about in the book. ​Born A

Crime,​ puts an end to the ignorance that was present for South Africa from many people across

the world, including America. Throughout his book we also experience major character

development of the main character, Trevor, whose thoughts and the way he now sees the world

dramatically change throughout his life. As a kid, he doesn’t really understand the concept of

apaerteid or why his mother pretends to ignore him while she walks with him on the sidewalk, or
why he has to wave to his father from the other side of the street, or why his grandmother beats

him every single time he tried to go outside and play. Later, when the system of aparteid ends,

and Trevor has grown into a young adult, he comes to understand many of the things that happen

around him were revolved around his race. Trevor Noah is now a highly successful television

host of one of the most known Talk Shows in the U.S., ​The Daily Show, a​ nd his book has been

sold to millions of readers around the world.