It's Trevor Noah: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Research how the legacy of apartheid continues to affect Black and Colored South Africans in a post-apartheid era. What legacies of apartheid do you see affecting Noah’s life as he grows up?

Noah explicitly identifies as Black, but he knows that other people perceive him as Colored. How do people perceive Noah throughout his memoir? How do their perceptions affect him?

Noah finds ways to navigate different racial and ethnic groups as a “cultural chameleon.” What are the ways he uses to navigate between different groups. How and why do these ways allow him to move between various social circles?

In addition to discussing how apartheid-era South Africa is racially striated, Noah discusses how it is also structured by class. What is the relationship between race and class in apartheid-era South Africa and in Noah’s memoir? A helpful term to think about might be intersectionality: the interconnected nature of social categories like race and class.

What does “race” mean to Noah at the beginning of the novel? Compare this to how he feels at the end of the novel. What events in his life inform how he feels about race?

Noah gives the women in his life credit for making him the man he is today. How is Noah shaped by the women in his life, particularly Patricia? What do they teach him that the men in his life, particularly Abel, are not able to?

Noah begins his novel by explaining that he was “born a crime,” but crime plays a role throughout his life. How does the concept of crime continue to affect him in his childhood? What about his young adulthood?

How does Patricia change throughout the course of the novel? How is she different at the end of the novel, while she is raising Noah’s younger brothers, than she is at the beginning while raising Noah? What about her character stays constant and why?