Born a Crime: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Trevor Noah’s book opens with a copy of the 1927 Immorality Act, which creates criminal penalties for anyone in South Africa, European or native, who has “illicit carnal intercourse” with someone of the other race. Found guilty, men can go to prison for up to five years and women for up to four.

In a prefatory note, Noah explains that apartheid is really “apart hate”: it exploits the linguistic and tribal differences among South Africa’s overwhelming black majority to “divide and conquer” by giving different groups slightly different levels of social status and ensuring that they fight one another, rather than collectively turning on the white government. The most notable division is that between the Zulu and the Xhosa, “South Africa’s two dominant groups.” The Zulu are traditionally warriors, so they continued fighting the invading colonial armies and suffering horrible losses. In contrast, the Xhosa “pride themselves on being the thinkers,” so they chose to learn English and negotiate with the white settlers instead. For a long time, the Zulu and Xhosa “blamed the other for a problem neither had created,” and after apartheid, their underlying animosity brings “South Africa […] to war with itself.”

Trevor Noah knows that jumping out of a car hurts more than it seems to in Hollywood movies: when he is nine, his mother throws him out of a car on the way home from church on Sunday. She is very religious, like many indigenous people forced into Christianity: Jesus promises to save them from the same people who impose him on them and call their traditional beliefs “primitive.” And so Noah goes to church Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, and then to three different churches on Sundays. His “mom said each church gave her something different.” Their congregations were also different: mixed, white, and black.

The first is a “jubilant” megachurch with a mixed racial congregation. The ex-bodybuilder pastor tries “really hard to make Jesus cool,” and the worship band plays rock music. The second is a white church, which focuses on closely analyzing scriptures, and is where Noah studies biblical stories in Sunday school. At home, Noah’s mother never allows him to consume popular songs or movies—only religious music and the Bible—so Noah always wins the Bible quizzes at white church. The third church is black church—sometimes a different one every week. The services are always outside and last much longer than they do white church; Noah decides that “Black people needed more time with Jesus because we suffered more.” Likewise, his mom figures that going to more churches would get her more blessings. The best part of black church is watching the pastor exorcise demons from people at the end.

Noah loves church but not the trips to church—it takes an hour to get to white church and forty-five minutes each to the other two (and sometimes back to white church at the end of the day). This particular Sunday, as often happened, the family’s secondhand Volkswagen Beetle won’t start. Noah’s mother decides they will take minibuses instead and blames the devil for the car’s failure to start. She and Trevor argue about whether Jesus wants them to go or not; she ends the argument by yelling, “Sun’qhela,” a Xhosa word that effectively means “don’t undermine me” and functions as “a command and a threat, all at once.”

Noah is already the champion of his Catholic school’s sports day because he always has to run from his mother, who has a habit of chasing him, in addition to throwing things at him (and blaming him when they break). So the usual order of business is, “Catch it, put it down, now run.” And, with Trevor always spending the grocery money on video games, he has to run a lot. (When he gets old enough to outrun his mother, she starts yelling, “Stop! Thief!” and watching the townspeople descend on him.)

Nelson Mandela is released from prison when Noah is five. Being so young, Noah scarcely understands what is going on, or what apartheid is and why they are happy for it to be over. But he does witness the violence among black South Africans trying to figure out which ethnic group would rule the country. The Inkatha Freedom Party, which is primarily Zulu, “very militant and very nationalistic,” fights with the African National Congress, which is Xhosa-led but diverse. Riots and murder (especially necklacing, or putting someone’s torso and arms in a tire and setting them on fire) are common. This violence is nearby, in the area surrounding the neighborhood where Noah grows up. But his mother never lets it dissuade them from going to work or school, and she is never afraid: she has God on her side.

At the end of that Sunday—9:00 P.M. at the white church, late enough that it is dangerous to be out, even though they are in a wealthy white suburb—Noah’s family finds themselves stranded, with no more minibuses coming by (these buses are an informal, private, unreliable system). So Noah’s mother decides to hitchhike. Just as a car pulls over to pick them up, so does a minibus, which swerves in front; a man jumps out with a Zulu “war club” and threatens the car’s driver. So Noah, his mother, and his baby brother Andrew get in the minibus.

Soon, the angry minibus driver and Noah’s mother get into an argument—she is a Xhosa woman with a mixed race child, who was climbing into a random man’s car just a few minutes before, and so she perfectly fits the stereotype of Xhosa women as “promiscuous and unfaithful.” As Noah dozes, the driver says Noah’s mother is “going to learn your lesson” and speeds ahead, furious and unwilling to let the family out of the car. At a stoplight, they jump out of the car—Patricia pushes Trevor out and jumps with Andrew after him—and then take off running, which is second nature by now.

When they stop running, they realize that they are cut and bleeding. Patricia explains to Trevor that the men were going to kill them; they call the police to bring them home and, while they wait, get into another argument about whether this is all part of God’s plan. Trevor wonders whether, next Sunday, his mom might be able to “ask [Jesus] to meet us at our house” instead. They break out in laughter.