Trevor and his mother, Patricia, have always had a tight knit relationship. They did however, start to drift apart when Patricia got herself into an abusive relationship that she would not end no matter how much she suffered- much to Trevor’s dismay.

Towards the end of the book- “Born a Crime”, the main character: Trevor Noah, receives a call from his little brother, Andrew, that his mom has been shot- in the leg… and in the head.

As it turns out, Trevor’s mom was shot by her abusive husband- Abel, because she did eventually decide to leave him.

Patricia was coming home from church on a Sunday afternoon with a large group of her family, as they were pulling into the driveway, Abel opened fire. He first got her in the leg, but she remained courageous, stepping in front of the gun (protecting her family) when she was shot in the back of her head.

Patricia lived. It was a miracle. Trevor was thankful, but still distraught. He put the blame on himself because he knew the relationship was toxic, but felt it was his fault because he forced her out of it.

Although, thankfully, I have never had this intense of a health scare with a family member, no matter how big or small, they all are grief-strickening.

When I was reading this section of the book, I immediately thought of my grandmother. She was a two-time cancer survivor, but being diagnosed a third-time, she wasn’t so lucky. She passed away in December of 2017- my eighth grade year.

I relate it to Trevor Noah’s situation because both cases were sudden. Trevor’s mom went from perfectly healthy to near death in a day, and my grandmother, yes, she was suffering from cancer, but it was just as shocking because of how fast her health Declined. It was appalling.

The connection I made between the two situations deepened my understanding of the book, because while I was reading, I could sense what he was feeling because I have experienced it myself. When a family member is put in a situation like that, first off, it’s shocking. Second off, you want to do anything and everything you can to help them, but you can’t- you feel useless.

1. Hustling is to work what surfing the internet is to reading. If you add up how much you read in a year on the internet- tweets, Facebook posts, lists- you’ve read the equivalent of shit ton of books, but in fact you’ve read no books in a year.
2. People always lecture the poor: “Take responsibility for yourself!Make something of yourself!” But with what raw materials are the poor to make something of themselves? People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime”. What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.
3. You don’t own the thing you love
4. You’ll have a few bruises and they’ll remind you of what happened and that’s okay. But after a while the bruises fade, and they fade for a reason- because now it’s time to get up to some shit again.

Gratitude is the act of someone being grateful or showing appreciation for a kind act that was done for them.

At the end of summer going into my freshman year of high school, we all remember Hurricane Harvey- how could we forget it?

Hurricane Harvey affected an enormous amount of families all over Texas and even took some lives, right in our hometown of Houston.

The storm delayed thr start of the school year, but in all honesty I didn’t mind because I was starting at a new school with new friends after transferring from KHS.

Anyways, tonight while I was doing my homework and finally got to writing this blog post, I was deciding whether to do gratitude, hope, courage, or empathy. I decided on gratitude because, first of all, I didn’t have to write a poem, and second of all, I had an idea for it directly after reading it.

My idea came from the chaotic events that occurred today, the flooding of streets, schools, homes, cars, and public places all around town. And don’t let me forget, the situation where I was stuck at school until 7:30 because my parents could not find a safe way to get me.

Back to topic though, these events immediately gave me the flashback of Hurricane Harvey a little over a year ago, and Hurricane Harvey jogged my memory of the gratitude me and my family felt several times when recovering from the flood.

Family, friends, and even strangers reached out and helped so much whether it was bringing us food, giving us a place to stay, and even helping us clear out our house, along with the trash and debris that covered it.

The gratitude my family felt was overwhelming and luckily today we were fortunate enough that our house, cars, and all possessions are okay, but it’s now time to return the favor and help out others in need, who were kind enough to help us in our time in need.

The title of the memoir I am reading is called “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah. A quote I found very significant was one that I read in chapter 2, it simply said, “I was born a crime”. That is it, but it stood out to me because it corresponds with the books title, and leads us to the overall meaning of the book.

The quote was said by the main character; Trevor Noah, but he did not directly say the quote to anyone in particular other than the audience.

The context of this quote was during a flash back to Trevor Noah’s birth in a hospital delivery room in South Africa. Trevor’s mother was having a C-Section and the nurses were surprised to remove a half-white/half-black child from her uterus. Trevor’s father (a white man) was not in the delivery room because during this day in age under the Laws of Apartheid, it was unacceptable for interracial marriage between whites and blacks to occur. With the nurses being aware of this law, they were forced to ask who and where the father was. Trevor’s mom answered that he was “from Swaziland”. The nurses figured that she was lying, but accepted it because they were forced to have an explanation.

This quote does not contain any figurative language but is significant to the story because it gives us the reason why the title is what it is and what the title means to Trevor Noah’s life and to the audience. The quote will explain how him being “born a crime” affects his life in the future as he grows up and the hardships he experiences.

This quote relates to the topic of segregation and its unjust basis. The quote reveals that Trevor Noah has experienced negative affects as soon as he was born (literally) for breaking a law that he had no choice to stop. He was a consequence of situation that he had no direct involvement in. The Law of Apartheid is unfair in the first place, but having Trevor being the one mainly affected is even more unfair.

In the book, “Born a Crime”, Trevor Noah is a colored boy, born and raised in South Africa. His mother is South African and his father is of Swiss-German decent. Due to the laws of Apartheid, his parents were prohibited to be together, even though they got along very well.

As a result of this, Trevor’s mother began a relationship with a new man, Abel. Abel described by Trevor, was a nice man, but he was an alcoholic with a very short temper, often mistreating his friends and family.

While reading this section of “Born a Crime”, I immediately connected it to a book I have previously read, called “Eleanor and Park”. I made this connection because in both books, the main character had a stepfather who was an alcoholic with a bad temper who mistreated them, and or the loved ones around them.

The significance of this connection is because I have previously experienced another book with an almost identical situation so I can better understand what Trevor is going through, because it is just like what Eleanor went through with her stepfather, Richie.

Both Abel and Richie have joined families with multiple kids, starting with good intentions, but after a while, their addiction to alcohol consumes them, and there short temper is exposed and they begin to hurt the loved ones that surround them, both physically and emotionally.

While writing about the connections between the two books, I began to wonder, why didn’t Trevor’s mom, Nombuyiselo (Patricia), and Eleanor’s mom, Sabrina, end relations with these men, considering all the pain the men caused the women themselves and their children?

My answer to this question is, I believe that the women didn’t end the relations with the men because still at this point in time, men were still clearly dominant over women, and the women ended up being too consumed by fear. They feared how the men would react if they tried to stand up to them or fight back.

Trevor Noah, the main character in the book, “Born a Crime” was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on February 2o, 1984. With this in consideration, Trevor Noah was born during a time when Apartheid was at its height. Apartheid, in South Africa, is a policy or system of institutionalized segregation that existed from 1948 to the early 1990s. Trevor Noah was born to a South African mother and a father of Swiss-German descent, making Trevor mixed, or in Apartheid terms, “colored”. Being colored was forbidden during the time of apartheid.

While reading “Born a Crime” and learning about Apartheid, I couldn’t help but relate it to the racial segregation that occurred in America during the mid-1900s. Both of these events occurred around the same time (Middle to late 1900s) and both of them involved the racial segregation of the blacks and the whites. The two ethnicities could not do as much as live in the same city during Apartheid in South Africa or share the same water fountain in the US.

By making this connection, I was able to better understand and relate to this text and Trevor Noah’s situation because I was already familiarized with a similar subject that happened in our very own country. I have previously been exposed to the US racial segregation era through my history classes in high school, middle school, and even elementary school. I have also learned about the segregation when I was taught about Martin Luther King Jr. and his teachings/values.

While reading this section of “Born a Crime”, I was wondering, why was it so forbidden to be “colored” during Apartheid? My assumption is that it was so forbidden because the whole goal of Apartheid was to keep the whites and the blacks separate from each other, and since a colored person was a mix of a white parent and a black parent, this completely went against the rules of Apartheid, because it indicated that interracial relationships were happening like Trevor Noah and his family.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton