Born A Crime (Trevor Noah) by Benjamin Stephenson

Chapter 1 (p. 6)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 14:43:57 UTC

"If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense."

Chapter 1

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 15:06:40 UTC

As a child, I remember having similar experiences with church going when it came to my grandparents. When I was at their house, we had a strict schedule of going to and attending church weekly.

Chapter 2 (p. 26)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 15:17:00 UTC

"The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statues, and regulations - I was born a Crime."

Chapter 2

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 15:20:59 UTC

Soweto was designed to be bombed and only had two exits. It reminds me of the way the capital structures the districts in the Hunger Games.

Chapter 3 (p. 35)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 15:25:37 UTC

"I grew up in a world run by women."

Chapter 3

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 15:28:35 UTC

Though Trevor did mention it, there is a connection between the poisoning of family members in order to have seniority in South Africa and Game of Thrones. This reminds me of Cersei's poisoning of John Arryn.

Chapter 4 (p. 52)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 16:08:39 UTC

"He called me "Mastah." In the car, he insisted on driving me as if he were my chauffeur. "Mastah must always sit in the backseat."

Chapter 4

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 16:13:36 UTC

Language is very powerful in the world and can divide between a native and nonnative people. Though this is a crude and irrational example in perspective, this reminded me of the languages in the Star Wars universe and the separation between cultures that caused oppression from the empire.

Chapter 6 (Rhetorical Question)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 18:52:00 UTC

What were they going to do, arrest a seven-year-old for arson?" (90)

Chapter 6 (Hypophora)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 18:53:12 UTC

"Why shouldn't he have those things? Of course he should have those things." (87)

Chapter 6 (Anaphora)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 18:56:56 UTC

"Catholic school is not the place to be creative and independent. Catholic school is similar to apartheid in that it's ruthlessly authoritarian, [...]" (88)

Chapter 2 (Parenthesis)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 18:59:49 UTC

"[R]iding in personal armored carriers-hippos, we called them- tanks with enormous tires [...]" (29)

Chapter 6 (Rule of Three)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:05:26 UTC

"I consumed boxes of books and wanted more, more, more." (77)

Chapter 2 (Asyndeton)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:07:21 UTC

"Under apartheid, the government labeled everything on your birth certificate: race, tribe, nationality." (27)

Chapter 5 (Polysyndeton)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:08:27 UTC

"Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, these things were izinto zabelungu - the things of white people." (74)

Chapter 6 (Anadiplosis)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:12:46 UTC

"The only authority my mother recognized was God's. God is love and Bible is truth [...]" (88)

Chapter 6 (Parallelism)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:13:37 UTC

"Sometimes he'd come and sleep at our house, and sometimes we'd go stay with him." (88)

Chapter 6 (Epistrophe)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:14:19 UTC

"My mother grew up with these rules and she questioned them. When they didn't hold up, she simply went around them." (88)

Chapter 5

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:26:39 UTC

All through my childhood my dad was very intent on supplying me with books and getting me to read. I think it shaped my perception on things and ability to think later on as it did with Trevor.

Chapter 5 (p. 69)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:27:43 UTC

"The end of apartheid was a gradual thing. It wasn't like the Berlin Wall where one day it just came down. Apartheid's walls cracked and crumbled over many years."

Chapter 6 (p. 84)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:55:56 UTC

"My Gran called me "Springbok," after the second-fastest land mammal on earth, the deer that the cheetah hunts. My mom had to become a guerrilla fighter."

Chapter 6

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-19 19:56:58 UTC

I remember when I was younger I had a tendency to settle disputes with my parents through written arguments similarly to Trevor. Whether it be a google slideshow or essay, I always found it to be a stimulating way to quarrel.

Chapter 7

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 01:37:46 UTC

Though it is relatively surface level, I had a similar chronological sequence of events when it came to my pets. I had two cats when I was younger, both not very affectionate creatures similar to Trevor's. I then moved on and got a dog after one passed and the other ran away.

Chapter 7 (p. 100)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 01:43:38 UTC

"Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one ever betrayed me more than Fufi."

Chapter 8

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:02:13 UTC

Robert, Trevor's Dad, reminds me of Oskar Schindler. He is a man who came from another country who moved into a country with people being oppressed, apartheid and the Holocaust. He then tried to combat this oppression and stood against it, Schindler's list and Robert's restaurant.

Chapter 8 (p. 109)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:10:13 UTC

This moment is really something special.

"'I've been following you,' he said, and he opened it up. It was a scrapbook of everything I had ever done [...]"

Chapter 9 (p. 120)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:13:44 UTC

"Black is in charge. Black is beautiful. Black is powerful. For centuries colored people were told: Blacks are monkeys. Don't swing from the trees like them. Learn to walk upright like the white man. Then all of a sudden it's "Planet of the Apes," and the monkeys have taken over.

Chapter 9

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:14:55 UTC

The internal prejudice in which a group, colored people, hate each other and speak of each other negatively due to their upbringing reminds me of the Holocaust and Jewish hate with some Jews working for the Nazis in camps.

Chapter 10 (p. 132)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:20:15 UTC

"Yes! Oh, yes. This. I don't know what this is, but I like it. Something had awakened. And it was right outside McDonald's, so it was extra special."

Chapter 10

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:22:31 UTC

I couldn't find a connection that really spoke to me in this chapter. The closest I could get is reminders of the trivial process of valentines from middle school. I find that some of Trevor's humiliating experiences are similar to that of my own.

Chapter 11 (p. 139)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:26:55 UTC

"After school I was on my own. Weekends I was on my own. Ever the outsider, I created my own strange little world. I did it out of necessity. I needed a way to fit in."

Chapter 11

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:31:47 UTC

I think I've had times in my life where I've felt a bit outside of groups, like I didn't fit in similar to Trevor. In middle school I'd have friends from different cliques, people I'd grown up with, but I never felt that I was truly among them, hanging out with them, etc. Now I think I've moved past that and found something more.

Chapter 12 (p. 149)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:37:23 UTC

"Ten words that might have changed my life if I'd had the courage to say them. But I hadn't, and now she was gone."

Chapter 12

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 02:40:03 UTC

I'm having a bit of a struggle to find connections within these chapters that don't pertain to myself because of how short and rather surface level, dating related, they are. However, I remember in elementary school there was a girl that I liked for a year in third grade. I never talked to her but I always had a crush on her. Eventually summer came and I kind of forgot about her. On the first day of fourth grade she told me she liked me. At that point I had 'moved on' if you will as a 9 year old kid. I feel like this connects a bit to Trevor's experience with Zaheera.

Chapter 13 Rhetorical Devices

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 19:18:46 UTC

Allusion (p. 154) : "My mom used to call him Bugs Bunny [...]"

Alliteration (p. 154) : "Teddy and Trevor, thick as thieves."

Asyndeton (p. 154) : "[B]ut it has everything - an arcade, a cinema, restaurants, South Africa's version of target, South Africa's version of the Gap.

Polysyndeton (p. 155) : "They chased and chased and we ran and ran."

Anaphora (p. 154) : "[R]each in, grab a chocolate, and drink the whiskey. Reach in, grab a chocolate, drink the rum. Reach in, grab a chocolate, drink the brandy."

Chapter 13 (p. 159)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 19:20:20 UTC

"These people had been so fucked by their own construct of race that they could not see that the white person they were looking for was sitting right in front of them."

Chapter 13

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-21 19:22:42 UTC

The way Trevor describes coming up with dream scenarios about how he would run and escape from danger in his neighborhood reminds me of how I used to think. All through elementary school I would day dream about how I would escape situations, what route I would take, how I could get out of a bad spot.

Chapter 14 (p. 179)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-23 19:50:40 UTC

"Then, out of nowhere, she leaned over and gave me a kiss. Like, a real kiss, a proper kiss. The kind of kiss that made me forget that the whole disaster ever happened."

Chapter 15 (p. 195)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-23 19:52:50 UTC

"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 it documentation."

Chapter 14

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-23 19:54:49 UTC

I have felt the same barrier in language with people who don't speak the same language as me or don't understand how I'm speaking. I can connect it with some of the difficulties ESL students had at Stanback with both learning and general communication.

Chapter 15

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-23 19:56:37 UTC

The differing perceptions of events and miscommunications when looking at the Hitler incident can be connected to our current world through social media. I find that often people from different backgrounds and cultural identities may take an online presence or comment differently than another in which it isn't offensive. This can create a divide that goes out of proportion through a miscommunication that one may not have even meant to commit.

Chapter 16 (p.222)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-27 16:26:35 UTC

"If we could see one another's pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place."

Chapter 16

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-27 16:34:25 UTC

The racial profiling and bribery that Trevor experiences I connect to the civil rights issues in America 30 years earlier. It reminded me of the difficulties black people would have when voting and how immediate racial profiling can entirely change a situation.

Chapter 17 (p. 240)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-27 19:04:44 UTC

"I'd never been more scared in my life. But I still had to pick. Because racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don't pick sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side."

Chapter 17

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-27 19:04:50 UTC

This connections isn't politically correct, my standard of an awkward situation is different to that of Trevor's twisted racist one, however I can see myself in his indecisiveness. When he enters the holding cell under the courtroom, I am reminded of myself, looking around a crowded room of peers trying to decide which clique to approach, who to talk to when I'm feeling nervous.

Chapter 18 (p. 162)

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-28 03:47:26 UTC

"I saw, more than anything, that relationships are not sustained by violence but by love. Love is a creative act. When you love someone you create a new world for them."

Chapter 18

benjaminstephes22 — 2025-05-28 03:51:11 UTC

I can connect Trevor's mom being shot in the head and surviving to Tommy in The Last of Us 2. In the game, Tommy is shot in the head and the bullet exits through a portion of his skull that wouldn't cause death similarly to that of Patricia.