Born a Crime Summary and Analysis

“Immorality Act” and Chapters 1-3 Summary

Trevor Noah (1984-) begins the book with the text of the Immorality Act of 1927, which made it a crime for white Europeans to have sexual intercourse with native Africans. In a brief historical preface to each chapter, he describes the divisive “genius” of apartheid and the history of South Africa.

Noah has a Swiss-German father and a Xhosa mother who broke this law to have him. His mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, takes him to three churches: mixed-race church, white church, and Black church. Noah is classified by the government as “Colored,” or racially mixed. He recounts a Sunday when he was 9 and the car wouldn’t start. Patricia decides she, Noah, and his baby brother, Andrew, will take an illegal minibus to church. When one of the drivers picks a fight with her, she pushes Trevor from the moving car and then jumps with the baby.

The author describes his mother’s courage. After leaving home, Patricia secretly rents a flat from a white man and works as a secretary. She meets Noah’s Swiss-German father, Robert, and convinces him to give her a child. She lies on Noah’s birth certificate because his existence is “proof of their criminality.” He is kept inside much of the time, not even allowed to play in the street with his cousins in Soweto, a Black urban complex adjacent to Johannesburg. Only Black people are allowed there. His contact with his father is limited by apartheid.

Noah is raised largely “in a world run by women.” He spends weeks at a time at his divorced grandmother Frances Noah’s two-room house in Soweto. He lives with his aunt, uncle, cousins, and blind great-grandmother, Koko. Life revolves around faith, and Noah often prays for the family at prayer meetings. He is afraid of the flies in the neighborhood outhouse, so when he is five years old, he decides to defecate on a newspaper in the kitchen. Koko can smell it, and when his grandmother and mother come home, they find the excrement in the trash. They burn it as a demon, praying together.

“Immorality Act” and Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Born a Crime doesn’t go into great detail about Trevor Noah’s mega-career. Instead, it focuses on the almost insurmountable deprivations of his childhood and how his mother’s cultivation of his innate intelligence and resourcefulness allow him to survive and, over time, to be an achiever.

In these early chapters, Noah examines the earliest part of his life as a child conceived and born illegally—as “a crime”—under the apartheid regime of South Africa. Although the Immorality Act is finally lifted in 1985, the year after his birth, Noah cannot be seen in public with his parents. When his mother takes him to the park, she pretends she is the maid. These early experiences help Noah learn that the color of his skin is important and being with the wrong group will cause trouble. Being kept indoors all the time means that Noah never makes friends, doesn’t get enough exercise, and is only socialized by his immediate family. He makes up his own games and entertains himself, which probably contributes to his creative talents as a future entertainer.

Noah argues constantly with his mother about Jesus. Many of their arguments—which Noah always loses—center around what Jesus wants or thinks. Noah doesn’t understand Patricia’s faith. She never wavers, no matter how hard he tries to show her another way of thinking. Yet her intractability concerning God contributes to Noah’s ability to think independently, to present an argument, and to develop a worldview that is broader and more open-minded.