Born a crime quotes

setting soweto/ defiance

"There is something magical about Soweto… it gave us a sense self-determination and control" page 40

Racism/Crime Johannesburg

"The white neighbourhoods of Johannesburg were built on white fear- fear of black crime" page 151

Apartheid/Racism - laws

• "Apartheid was perfect racism… a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control"

Apartheid/Racism - race mixing

• "race- mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent" page 2

Apartheid/Racism - government

“ you were what the government said you where”

• after pencil symbol If you were applying to be white, the pencil went into your hair.

Poverty - Patricia

She would go down to the river, take the clay from the riverbank, and mix it with the water to make a grayish kind of milk.

• within Patricia village

Poverty - Money

"the first thing I learned about having money is that it gives you choices"

• gained from CD pirating

Poverty - Crime/Hood

-       " the hood made me realise that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares" page 209

Poverty - Cash/Hood

-              cash is the one thing everyone in the hood needs" page 210

Love/Relationships - Trevors parents

• "there was a genuine bond and a love between my parents. I saw it"

Love/Relationships - Trevor and Patricia

My relationship with my mom was like… a cop and a criminal in the movies"

• also symbol of Tom and Jerry

Love/Relationships - Abuse Hate vs Love

"growing up in a home of abuse… you can love a person you hate or hate a person you love"

Love/Relationships - Patricia and Noah teammates

• "she was my teammate.. Me and her against the world

Love/Limitations - Noah and Robert

• " the only time I could be with my father was indoors”

Religon/Gender Roles

• "in Soweto religion filled the void left by absent men”

• as a result of fathers in exile and prison

Love/Devotion - Noah Debt

-              " you will be in debt for the rest of your life… just please help my mum

• in hospital after Patricia is shot

Love/Relationships/Violence

-              " that relationships are not sustained by violence but by love. Love is a creative act"

Love - Patricia giving world

-              When you love someone, you create a new world for them. My mother did that for me

Love/ Poverty - experience

I never felt poor because our lives were so rich with experience.”

• going on drives, books, schools

Love/Being Chosen - Noah and Robert

Being chosen is one of the greatest gifts you can give to another human being.”

• after Robert replied to Trevors letter

Hood/Community - leaving community

“The hood has a gravitational pull. It never leaves you behind, but it also never lets you leave.”

• G

Abel/ Abuse - eyes

“His eyes would go red, bloodshot. That was the clue I learned to read.”

Abel/ Abuse - Trevor

The first time Abel hit me I felt something I had never felt before. I felt terror.

Patricia/Beating - saving

  “When I beat you, I’m trying to save you. When they beat you, they’re trying to kill you.” – Patricia Pg 243 

Patricia/Beating - afraid

  “In all the times I received beatings from my mum, I was never scared of her.”

Dreams/Aspirations - Driveways

"the story of Soweto is the story of the driveways. Its a hopeful place

Dreams/Aspirations - Patricia goal

• "if my mother had one goal, it was to free my mind"

• teaching trevor how to think

Dreams/Aspirations - Patricia exposing

• My mother had exposed me to a different world than the one she grew up in. She bought me the books she never got to read. She took me to the schools that she never got to go to

Dreams/ Aspirations - Economic

• "tuck shop guy"

• "I had a natural talent for selling to people

Dreams/Aspirations - Black tax

"my mothers greatest fear was that I would end up paying the black tax"

• Sisyphean nature of the black tax 

Religon/Abel praying

 - “Pray for Abel…Because he doesn’t hate us. He hates himself

Religon/Guns

"then she started to pray, and that’s when the gun misfired

Religon - guidance

"if god is with me, who can be against me

• after she left hospital 50,000 rand has she had no health insurance

Religon - power of Prayer

-      " she believed my prayers were more powerful because I prayed in English"

• prayer meetings at francis noah house

Biblical illusion/ Humour

" moses parting the red sea, David slaying goliath, Jesus whipping the money changers in the temple" page 7

Language - Bridging

-             - " I soon learned that the quickest way to bride the race gap was through language" page 54

• soweto is a metlting pot of races and languages and trevor defied expections

Language - value of English

- " English is the international language and the language of money" page 161

• 11 officical languages of SA - but english connected media and world

Education - lack of

- " we weren't taught to think critically… we weren't being taught to think at all"

• bantu schools

Language - Nelson Mandela

-              "Nelson Mandela once said, If you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart"

Education/ Power

- "if you didn’t go to a good school, youd end up dead or in prison"

Education - Patrica providing acess to schools

-  My mother showed me what was possible. The thing that always amazed me was how she got me into schools I was not supposed to be in"

Language - Barrier Babiki

• " I'd been mesmerised by her beauty and just the idea of her - I didn’t known I was supposed to talk to her"

Language - Hulk

• "once we started talking I realised he wasn’t the hulk at all"

Language/Identity/Culture

• “Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it.” A shared language says “were the same.” A language barrier says “were different.”

• stems from divisions of apartheid

Defiance/Resilience Patricia car

• " a black woman learning how to type was like a blind person learning how to drive" page 23

Defiance/Resilience - Patricia Rebel

• " she was a rebel refusing to conform to ideas about what black people did and didn’t do"

• about black women owning cats being witches

Defiance - Racial Traditions

• " the whole tradition of women bowing to men, my mom found absurd. But she didn’t refuse to do it. she overdid it. she made a mockery out of it

Defiance/Religon Patricia

• "my mother is as stubborn as she is religious'

• catching minibusses to church

Resilience Patricia - obstacles

obstacles…. Only made her more determined to forge ahead"

• about car breaking down

Adversity - Patricia with Noah

- "I couldn’t walk with my mother, either; a light- skinned child with a black woman would raise to many questions"

Adversity - Family/Apartheid

• " we'd sneak around and visit my dad when we could”

Adversity - Economic

• "shed steal food from pigs"

• " I remember she literally ate dirt"

Violence - Cycle

• I saw the futility of violence, the cycle that just repeats itself, the damage that's inflicted on people that they in turn inflict on others.

Violence - Abel/Bible

• "He was Abel.. A name straight out of the bible, his Tsonga name s Ngisaveni. It means 'Be afraid.'"

Violence/Abel - Animal Motif

• "I enjoyed being with Abel in the same way I enjoyed playing with a tiger cub… I never thought about brining it home" pg 249

• I always though of Abel as Cobra… explosive" pg 254

Gender and Power - Dinky

'

he was trying to live up to this image of what he thought a husband should be, dominate, controlling

• attempting to be abusive

Gender and Power - abuse

-     “ if a woman was being hit, people don’t get involved"

Gender and Power - Tsonga Culture

-            "Tsonga culture, I learned is extremely patriarchal. We're talking about a world where women must bow when they greet a man"

Gender and Power - Abel and Birds

- P " he only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage"

Gender and Power - Relationship with cops

. He walked over to the cops, and the station turned into a boys’ club.

• after fight with patricia

Gender and Power - Patricia second girl

-             "my mother was unwanted. She was the second girl"

Identity and Belonging - moving between

" Since I belonged to no group. I learned to move seamlessly between groups. I floated. I was a chameleon"

Identity and belonging - Jail stereotypes

" I put on this character; I Played a stereotype”

Victims - Apartheid

• " We were victims… victims of apartheid, victims of abuse"

Noah Lack of Belonging

• " I felt like I belonged everywhere and nowhere at the same time"

Belonging - Noah TV

I realised that whenever black people were on-screen speaking in African languages, they felt familiar to me.”

Noah Belonging - Sandringham

-              “This was my turf, this was my neighbourhood.”

Noah Belonging - White people

-              “I got along with the white kids, but I didn’t belong with the white kids.”

Noah identity name

-              'Trevor, a name with no meaning whatsoever' 'She wanted me to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone”

Humour - tackling as coping mechnism

“There was no subject too dark or too painful for her to tackle with humour.”

• after mulberry tree

Humour - poo

You’re never more yourself than when you’re taking a shit”

Humour - chocolate

• “Pity your grandfather couldn’t keep his hands off the chocolate, eh?”

Humour coping - book end

• “She broke out into a huge smile and started laughing… laughing together through the pain in the light of a petrol station on the side of the road in the middle of the night” Pg 17  booked end “laughing together through pain

Abel Alcohol coping mechanism

• "Abel had driven home drunk, blind drunk, drunker than we'd ever seen him before'

Abel abuse - Trevor

• “The first blow hit me in the ribs.”   “Because there was no purpose to it… Nothing about it was coming from a place of love.”

Abel charges made by Patricia

• “All the times my mother had called the police to report him. Abel had no criminal record.” Pg 284

Racism - coloured and blacks

• “Some blacks were promoted to coloured, and some coloureds were demoted to black.” Pg 119

Racism - Teddy Cameras x 2

• “ “Are you people blind?! That’s me!... These people had been so fucked by their own construct of race

• if the camera has to pick it picks me as white

Patricia - questioning authority

“she taught me to challenge authority and question the system”

• challenge catholic school

Resilience - crying

“its better to take it, spend some time crying, then wake up the next day and move on’

• about patricia abuse to noah

Hulk in jail

'The world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world because he has none of the tools necessary to cope with it.

sizwe

sizwe was one of those people who brought out the best in everybody

zulu vs xhosa

the zulu went to war with the white man the xhosa played chess with the white man

eden park

in eden park everyone looked like me but we couldnt have been more different

zaheera

Im going to have a crush on her forever and that’s all thats ever going to happen 

hope and angels patricia

ive got all of heavens angels behind me - street and riot

law enforcment

peeking through windows - clearly an assignment for only the finest law enforcement officers

uncle veille

uncle velile “spent most of his time at the local tavern getting into fights

women role

women held the community together

• while husbands in jail or exile

humor justice system

my own family does what the american justice system does  i was given more leniant treatment than the black kids

• no abuse from grandfather and grandma

learning languages to cope

i learned several languages because i grew up in s house where there was no option but to learn them

patricia use of language

i saw how she used language to cross boundaries handle situations navigate the world

language as a tool

it became a tool that served me my whole life

bantu schools bad teaching

bantu schools taught no science no history no civics they taught metrics and agriculture 

patricia having english

but she had english she could read and write

patricia advice to noah

dont cry about your past ,life is full of pain, let the pain sharpen you but dont hold onto it dont be bitter 

• about her life in Transkei.

patricia motivation

she found her way through sheer force of will

• gota house job and home after going to transeki

lack of ability to follow dreams

we tell people to follow their dreams but u can only dream of what u can imagined

black people eating

black ppl came because there were few upscale establishments where they could eat

curiosity of eating with races

the curiosities of being together overwhelmed the amnosity keeping them apart