This resource is for year 12 students studying Born a Crime by Trevor Noah in the VCE Victorian English Curriculum for 2026.
Introduction
Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime genre that are stories about his own life, his childhood and adolescence, and it is made up of anecdotes and memories that at times jump around with flashbacks and flashforwards, small vignettes that in first person and often have a humorous text for comic effect. Therefore, Noah’s memoir is not simply a story about the horrors of apartheid, or about the brutality of structural racism. It is a story about resilience, resistance, family, patriarchy, justice, faith, sacrifice, humour, coming-of-age, education, language, and luck despite these things.
Divided into 3 parts that loosely conform to the three stages of Noah’s life from early childhood through to adolescence. Within each chapter there is a broader commentary on social, racial, and political aspects of life in South Africa and personal anecdotes. Before or after each chapter, there is also a short passage that acts as a lead-in, provides context, or sometimes offers a different perspective. The short contextual passage discusses the lasting impact of apartheid in South Africa.
The language, which plays a significant theme of the text is informal, witty, sometimes coarse, and often hilarious, but is chosen with words for their particular effects. Noah’s humour does not minimise the very real violence and struggles of his childhood, it is used to highlight both the adversity he faced and the strength of his will to overcome those struggles. Throughout the text, dark and often disturbing memories are filtered through this lens of comedy.
Prologue and Epigraphs to the Text
The book begins with a dedication from Trevor Noah to his mother who is the most important person in the text. To contextualise the ‘crime’ of his birth, Noah also includes an excerpt from the 1927 Immorality Act, which includes two points: forbidding European males from having ‘illicit carnal intercourse’ with ‘a native female’ and vice versa.
Apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation and white supremacy in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was a legal framework that enforced strict separation between racial groups, with the white minority holding political and economic control and the black majority being denied basic rights, including where they could live, work, and go to school. The system was officially ended with the country’s first multiracial elections in 1994.
Born a Crime in a Nutshell
Trevor Noah’s memoir about his childhood and adolescence in South Africa during and after apartheid. Born to a Black Xhosa mother and a White Swiss-German father, he was a mixed-race child whose existence was illegal under apartheid laws. The book recounts his life navigating racial hierarchy and poverty, his close and supportive relationship with his rebellious mother, and how he used humour and language skills to overcome violence and find his identity.
Language opens a pathway towards opportunity
In Born a Crime, it is clear that a knowledge of multiple languages enables opportunities that help Trevor and his mother to continue to move forward, and aspire to a life that would be otherwise inconceivable without that knowledge. Throughout the memoir, their abilities as multilingual shapeshifters mean they have the resources to communicate and construct circumstances that give space for love, empathy, and connection; often with those who may otherwise present as a threat. Language provides them with the ability to connect with potential enemies and even expose the hypocrisy of apartheid.
While language provides many opportunities, it is also apparent that South Africa’s ‘Tower of Babel’ is fertile ground for misunderstanding and exploitation. Noah’s rich and textured narration and dialogue is loaded with accented English, and the layers of various tribal dialects and tongues, inviting the understanding that language can be ‘used to cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate the world’ (p. 55). While understanding multiple languages gets Trevor and his mother out of some impossibly dangerous situations, it also helps him to identify, examine and expose the hypocrisy of apartheid South Africa and those who label them as ‘other’.
| THEMES | ||
| apartheid | race and colour | poverty |
| crime and violence | coming of age | the law |
| language | education | relationships and affairs of the heart |
| identity and belonging | division | gender |
| humour | defiance | aspiration and place |
| CHARACTERS | |
| Trevor Noah | Protagonist and narrator. Noah’s narration traverses his childhood and coming of age at a politically frenzied time for apartheid in South Africa. His comedic storytelling style and his ability to reflect deeply upon his childhood without bitterness is astonishing. His relationships with those around him are rendered in rich detail in this text. |
| Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah | As stubborn as she is religious, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah (‘Mbuyi’ to her husband Abel) is Trevor’s mother. A fierce Xhosa woman, she is characterised by Noah as ‘never scared. She is the source of Noah’s identity, a symbol of resilience against apartheid, and a model for his own independence and creativity. Her decision to have a mixed-race child was a protest, and she raised Trevor with a combination of strict love, languages, and faith to equip him for a world that sought to limit him. |
| Robert | Noah’s father, a Swiss German who settled in South Africa in the late 1970s, was ‘a complete mystery’ (p. 103) to him, even though they managed to have a relationship against lawful and societal circumstances |
| Abel Ngisaveni Shingange | Trevor’s step-father and father to both of Trevor’s younger brothers, Andrew, and Isaac. Abel’s ongoing abuse of Trevor, and of his brothers and his mother, reaches a horrific climax in the final chapter when he shoots Patricia in the back of the head, in front of Trevor’s two younger brothers. Abel’s dependence on alcohol and the way that this plummets him into acts of domestic terror inspire constant fear. |
| Andrew | Trevor’s younger brother and son of Abel, Andrew is about eight years younger than Trevor. |
| Isaac | Trevor’s youngest brother is also fathered by Abel. When Trevor’s mother discovers she is pregnant again, she is forty-four years old. |
| Mlungisi | Mlungisi is Trevor’s older cousin, responsible and sensible helps get Trevor out of multiple tough situations and giving Trevor empathy and support regardless of the differences between them. |
| Teddy | Trevor befriends Teddy at Sandringham, the school he attends from grade eight, and he describes their relationship as ‘mayhem’ (p. 153). Teddy is the son of a domestic worker living in the staff quarters in the wealthy suburb of Linksfield, near Sandringham. |
| Tim | Friends with Trevor in his final years of school, Tim is the mastermind behind the Busta Rhymes and Spliff Star ruse and is also responsible for setting Trevor up with Babiki, who does not share any common languages with Trevor. Tim is ‘always trying to cut a deal’ and is one of two ‘middlemen’ working for Trevor in his CD business. |
| Sizwe | The second of Trevor’s two middlemen for his CD business in high school, Sizwe is described as ‘a leader and protector of Township kids’ (p. 203). The two sustain their friendship beyond school and Trevor continues to gravitate towards him, spending all of his time when he finishes school in Alexandra. |
| Daniel | Daniel is the white kid at Sandringham who Trevor works for as a middleman selling CDs, who eventually enables Trevor’s CD business by giving him his CD writer, and therefore the means of production. Noah credits Daniel with ‘changing [his] life’ (p. 186). |
| Hitler | Hitler (his real name) is part of Sizwe and Trevor’s dance crew and ‘was a great friend’ (p. 193). An excellent dancer, ‘he was mesmerising to watch’ (p. 193) and was the star attraction of their party bookings. Their whole DJ set was built around his performances. Hitler also acts as a vehicle for Noah to unpack what a black South African education looks like. |
| Temperance Noah | Temperance Noah, Trevor’s maternal grandfather, was ‘The only semi-regular male figure in my life’ (p. 35). Noah highlights the irony in his name as ‘he was not a man of moderation at all’ (p. 35). His descriptions of his grandfather paint a picture of a womaniser with a big personality who lived with his ‘second family’ in the Meadowlands. |
| Frances Noah | Noah’s grandmother ‘was the family matriarch … barely 5 feet tall … but rock hard’. Noah characterises her as the opposite to his grandfather: ‘calm, calculating, with a mind as sharp as anything’ (p. 37). |
| Maylene | The focus of his affectionate endeavours in the ‘Affairs of the Heart: Part I’, Maylene is the only coloured girl at H.A. Jack and delivers the first of his documented love lessons, in the context of Valentine’s Day. He is twelve years old. |
| Zaheera | Based on his first love lesson where he ‘learned that cool guys get girls, and funny guys get to hang out with the cool guys who get girls’ (p. 146), he decides that he ‘shouldn’t even try’ (p. 146). He carefully cultivates a connection with Zaheera based on friendship. |
| Babiki | Babiki becomes the focus of his third love lesson, in ‘Affairs of the Heart, Part III: The Dance’. It is his final year of high school and his friend Tim sets him up on a date for the matric dance with ‘the most beautiful girl he has ever seen’ (p. 168). |
| Fufi | Fufi one of Trevor’s childhood dogs was actually deaf but Trevor learns from Fufi that love is not diminished and you cannot own the thing you love. |
| SYMBOLS | ||
| Mulberry tree | Patricia’s second-hand Volkswagen & cars | CD writer |
| epigraphs | coming of age | Maylene, Zaheera & Babiki |
| language | beatings | drive ways in Soweto |
| stolen digital camera | chameleon | food |
| cheese | church | identity & whiteness |