Discussion Questions
1. Trevor Noah
opens his memoir with a story about being thrown from a car by his mother. In
what ways does this story illustrate the overarching narrative of Trevor Noah’s
early life?
• be ready for anything
• crazy things will happen to him
• his mother would do anything to protect him
• liked how people who don’t know something, write about
their process of learning it, like learning about abuse
2. In Born a
Crime, Noah seeks to dispel the myth that the ending of apartheid was
bloodless. How much did you know about the end of apartheid before reading this
book, and what did you learn about the history of South Africa by reading Noah’s
story?
• didn’t know how South African government made African
people fight among themselves
• didn’t know that South African government researched the
Third Reich and America’s Jim Crow policies
• “My own family basically did what the American
justice system does: I was given more lenient treatment than the black kids.”
• “We live in a world where we don’t see the
ramifications of what we do to others, because we don’t live with them.”
• “The genius of apartheid was
convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other.
Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate
one another so you can run them all. At the time, black South Africans
outnumbered white South Africans nearly five to one, yet we were divided into
different tribes with different languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda,
Ndebele, Tsonga, Pedi, and more. Long before apartheid existed these tribal factions
clashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to
divide and conquer. All nonwhites were systematically classified into various
groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights
and privileges in order to keep them at odds. Perhaps”
• “What I do remember, what I will never forget, is
the violence that followed. The triumph of democracy over apartheid is
sometimes called the Bloodless Revolution. It is called that because very
little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets.”
3. One of the
most impressive characteristics that Noah conveys about his mother is her
faith. How did Patricia’s faith impact young Trevor, and what do you think has
been the lasting impression of Patricia’s faith on Trevor Noah’s life?
• loved how Trevor argued with his mother about God
• he was more of an atheist
• she survived the gunshots by praying to Jesus
• “That was my mom. Don’t fight the system. Mock
the system.”
• “The only authority my mother recognized was God’s.
God is love and the Bible is truth—everything else was up for debate. She
taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it
backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her.”
• “I was blessed with another trait I inherited
from my mother: her ability to forget the pain in life. I remember the thing
that caused the trauma, but I don’t hold on to the trauma. I never let the
memory of something painful prevent me from trying something new. If you think
too much about the ass-kicking your mom gave you, or the ass-kicking that life
gave you, you’ll stop pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules. It’s
better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move
on. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s
okay.”
“You’ll have a few bruises and
they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s okay. But after a while the
bruises fade, and they fade for a reason—because now it’s time to get up to some
shit again.”
• “My mom raised me as if there were no limitations
on where I could go or what I could do. When I look back I realize she raised
me like a white kid—not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that
the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and
thoughts and decisions mattered. We”
• “we got to where we were, but none of it ever
came from a place of self-pity. “Learn from your past and be better because of
your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of
pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.” And
she never was. The deprivations of her youth, the betrayals of her parents, she
never complained about any of it.
4. Trevor Noah
learned to speak six different languages growing up. What impressed you
about the ways that Trevor and his mother navigate neighborhoods, cultures, and
family; and how did language make that possible?
• “When you make the effort to speak someone else’s
language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to
them, “I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me.
I see you as a human being.”
• “That,
and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language,
even more than color, defines who you are to people.”
• on the audiotape, we could tell there was a German (it was
Swiss) accent.
• “Language brings with it an identity and a
culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says “We’re the
same.” A language barrier says “We’re different.” The architects of apartheid
understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we
were separated not just physically but by language as well. In the Bantu
schools, children were only taught their home language. Zulu kids learned in
Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we’d fall into the trap
the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were
different.”
• “If you spoke to me in Zulu, I replied to you in
Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn’t
look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.”
• “They were ready to do me violent harm, until
they felt we were part of the same tribe, and then we were cool. That, and so
many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even
more than color, defines who you are to people. I became a chameleon. My color
didn’t change, but I could change your perception of my color.”
5. With all of
the challenges Trevor faced growing up, he was gifted by his mother’s assurance
that he was always wanted and loved by both of his parents. Given that
knowledge, how did issues of race play out in Noah’s relationships with those
closest to him — his mother, father, grandparents, and cousins?
• even though his father didn’t live in the same house, he
stayed nearby until Trevor was 14, and they visited.
• he didn’t know why he didn’t get beaten by his grandmother
(she thought of him as white)
• he could get away with things because he wasn’t seen as
black
• he thought of himself as black, except while saying he was
white to get out of something
• “I was wanted. Being chosen is the greatest gift
you can give to another human being.”
• “Love is a creative act. When you love someone,
you create a world for them.”
• “Once we reconnected, I was overcome by this
drive to make up for all the years we’d missed. I decided the best way to do it
was to interview him. I realized very quickly that that was a mistake.
Interviews will give you facts and information, but facts and information weren’t
really what I was after. What I wanted was a relationship, and an interview is
not a relationship. Relationships are built in the silences. You spend time
with people, you observe them and interact with them, and you come to know
them—and that is what apartheid stole from us: time. You can’t make up for that
with an interview, but I had to figure that out for myself. I”
• “Relationships are built in the silences.”
• “It’s such a strange thing, but in two years of
hustling I never once thought of it as a crime. I honestly didn’t think it was
bad. It’s just stuff people found. White people have insurance. Whatever
rationalization was handy. In society, we do horrible things to one another because
we don’t see the person it affects. We don’t see their face. We don’t see them
as people. Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to
keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white
people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is
unconscionable.”
6. Noah recounts
his mother’s use of the Xhosa term Sun’qhela, “a phrase with many shades
of meaning” including “don’t undermine me”, “don’t underestimate me,” and “just
try me.” Noah recalls that Sun’qhela is “a command and a threat, all at
once.” Were there any such phrases employed in your childhood, and if so, what
were they?
• “The fact that I grew up in a world run by women
was no accident. Apartheid kept me away from my father because he was white,
but for almost all the kids I knew on my grandmother’s block in Soweto,
apartheid had taken away their fathers as well, just for different reasons.”
• “Everything I have ever done I’ve done from a
place of love. If I don’t punish you, the world will punish you even worse. 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.”
7. In sharing
his story, Trevor Noah shares the stories of many of his family members,
including how the meanings of their names were reflected in their lives. His
mother’s name, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, means “She Who Gives Back.” His
grandfather, Temperance Noah, was anything but temperate, but his nickname “Tat
Shisha”, which translates loosely as “the smokin’ hot grandpa”, was a perfect
fit. What insights does Noah’s story offer about the ways that identity is both
assigned and chosen?
• “The hood has a gravitational pull. It never
leaves you behind, but it also never lets you leave. Because by making the
choice to leave, you’re insulting the place that raised you and made you and
never turned you away.”
8. A prominent
character in this memoir is Noah’s stepfather, Abel. The name “Abel” recalls
the biblical character in the book of Genesis, but his stepfather’s Tsonga name,
Ngisaveni, means “Be afraid.” Those two names would turn out to be indicative
of his stepfather’s public and private personas. How does Noah describe and
wrestle with the issue of domestic violence?
• Noah is dismayed when his
stepfather, Abel, begins abusing him and his mother.
• Noah also learns a hard
lesson about how South African society viewed female domestic violence victims
when he saw how the local police discredited his mother’s claims of abuse.
• Eventually, his mother
leaves Abel after he nearly kills her (but God saves her).
• “That’s when I realized the police were not who I
thought they were. They were men first, police second.”
• “He thinks he’s the policeman of the world,” she
said. “And that’s the problem with the world. We have people who cannot police
themselves, so they want to police everyone else around them.”
• “The way my mother always explained it, the
traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love
with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an
exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because
his dream is to put her in a cage.”
9. Some of the
most humorous and heartbreaking stories in Born a Crime are about young
Trevor’s early forays into relationships with girls. How did his parents
relationships with others influence his perspective on love and relationships?
• The time he went to the dance brought up the language
issue again – he didn’t even know that they have never spoken to each other
because every time they met in the previous month, they were with a group, and
with multiple languages in the group, they all translated for each other.
10. A notable
relationship in Born a Crime is between young Trevor and his dog, Fufi.
What parallels might be drawn between the way Noah describes his dog Fufi and
how he describes himself in his childhood and youth?
• Hard to believe that he didn’t know his own dog was deaf
until the dog died!
11. Noah
describes, with hilarious detail, an incident that happened when he was home
alone with his great-grandmother (Koko) and didn’t want to use the outhouse.
Which incidents, friends, or family members described in Born a Crime
are most memorable to you?
• setting fire to house
• hustling all day and not making any money
• Hitler dance
• avoiding outhouse
12. Noah and his
mother lived in a variety of neighborhoods over the years. How does racial
segregation affect the daily lives of young Trevor and his mother? What
connections can you identify between the challenges in transportation and
housing faced by Noah’s family and those faced by people living in poverty in
racially segregated communities in the U.S. and Canada today?
• mission schools were there
only education
• all those color delineations
meant privileges for those who were “white”
• “The white neighborhoods
of Johannesburg were built on white fear—fear of black crime, fear of black
uprisings and reprisals—and as a result virtually every house sits behind a
six-foot wall, and on top of that wall is electric wire. Everyone lives in a
plush, fancy maximum-security prison. There is no sitting on the front porch,
no saying hi to the neighbors, no kids running back and forth between houses. I’d
ride my bike around the neighborhood for hours without seeing a single kid. I’d
hear them, though. They were all meeting up behind brick walls for playdates I
wasn’t invited to. I’d hear people laughing and playing and I’d get off my bike
and creep up and peek over the wall and see a bunch of white kids splashing
around in someone’s swimming pool. I was like a Peeping Tom, but for
friendship. It was only after a year or so that I figured out the key to making
black friends in the suburbs: the children of domestics.”
• “Race mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.
Humans being humans, and sex being sex, that prohibition never stopped anyone.
There were mixed kids in south Africa 9 months after the first Dutch boats hit
the beach at Table Bay.”
• “People don’t want to be rich. They want to be
able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the
freedom of money. With”
• “The hood was strangely comforting, but comfort
can be dangerous. Comfort provides a floor but also a ceiling.”
Other Quotes About
Racism
“Growing up the way I did, I
learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that
awards them all the perks.”
“I often meet people in the
West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history,
without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African
atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t
have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous
records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to.
Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed.
We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read
through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only
guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess. When Portugal and Belgium were
plundering Angola and the Congo, they weren’t counting the black people they
slaughtered. How many black people died harvesting rubber in the Congo? In the
gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal? So in Europe and America, yes, Hitler
is the Greatest”
“In South Africa, the
atrocities of apartheid have never been taught that way. We weren’t taught
judgment or shame. We were taught history the way it’s taught in America. In
America, the history of racism is taught like this: “There was slavery and then
there was Jim Crow and then there was Martin Luther King Jr. and now it’s done.”
It was the same for us. “Apartheid was bad. Nelson Mandela was freed. Let’s
move on.”
“There is also this to
consider: The name Hitler does not offend a black South African because Hitler
is not the worst thing a black South African can imagine”
“My mother calls it ‘the black
tax.’ Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather
than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose
everything just trying to bring everyone behind you back up from zero.”
“In society, we do horrible
things to one another because we don’t see the person it affects. We don’t see
their face. We don’t see them as people.”
“In any society built on
institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as
unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent.”
“The reason for this was that
the South African government wanted to establish good relations with the
Japanese in order to import their fancy cars and electronics. So Japanese people
were given honorary white status while Chinese people stayed black.”
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