Trevor Noah Belonging

Trevor Noah is a world-renowned comedian. He recently hosted the Grammy’s, and he had a popular comedy show called “The Daily Show” which he left in 2022. In 2016, he wrote a memoir titled “Born a Crime” detailing his early childhood and teenage years in South Africa as a mixed child. He was born during apartheid, but Nelson Mendela eradicated it when he was still a young boy. Even though apartheid is no longer prominent, Trevor continues to have issues growing up in South Africa being a mixed race. Because there were few mixed kids he grew up with, he always felt too black for the white kids and too white for the black kids. It was an isolating experience for Trevor. Throughout the book, Trevor Noah finds community and belonging by learning

Trevor always feels slightly out of place at every school he goes to. He lives too far away from townships to be good friends with the black kids and was too black to be “one of the white kids”. Because of this, he does not have many friends. At his school there is a tuck shop that kids can buy lunch from. The lines get extremely long, but he is quick, and is always the first in line. So people pay him to buy their lunch. Although he can make money from this and become useful, it is not the same as actually having real friends, as Trevor states in this chapter, “I was like the weed dealer, but of food. The weed guy is always welcome at the party. He’s not a part of the circle, but he’s invited into the circle temporarily because of what he can offer.” (Noah 140). Trevor Noah mentions giving “what he can offer” (Noah 140) which is giving food to people. This teaches him he can give people, his classmates, something they want, food, and more quickly. Even though his peers do not invite him to be actual friends, he is still not a total outsider as he was before. For someone who has trouble making friends, this is a big

Trevor knows most of the mainstream languages, plus a few extras. As a child he learned English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and more. Because of the color of his skin, many assume he is white and therefore only speaks English or Afrikaans. Both Trevor and his mom use this to their advantage, getting them out of tricky situations similar to the one he finds himself in depicted here, “I was walking down the street, and a group of Zulu guys was walking behind me, closing in on me. And I could hear them talking to one another about how they were going to mug me. Speaking of Zulu, ‘Let’s get this white guy. You go to his left, and I’ll come up behind him”... I just spun around real quick and said, [Speaking in Zulu] ‘Yo, guys, why don’t we just mug someone together? I’m ready to go. Let’s do it.” (Noah 55) The group of boys on the street mistook Trevor for a white person or just assumed he could not speak their language. But he broke the language barrier that the Zulu boys did not even realize they had implemented. For Trevor, speaking in any language shows that he is worthy, that he is one of them. In his opinion, that is immensely