Satire Of Born A Crime

.Christopher Ruiz-Guerra
Scott Bently
Accelerated English 102
07 February 2023
How Born A Crime Utilizes Irony And Satire

When we think of childhood, the first things that come to mind are the times we spent with family, friends, and even our favorite childhood meals. It would never cross our minds that burning corpses, racism, and racial segregation would be prominent in our early lives. The examples listed is just the surface of the autobiographical book written by Trevor Noah, a South African comedian, TV host, and nominee for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in 2017. His outstanding book Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, follows a young Noah and his experience in South Africa as a mixed child during

Noah describes a day when he was five and it was raining. He needed to go use the restroom but didn't want to get wet going to the local outhouse. He decided the best course of action was to poop in the kitchen on top of some newspaper, while no one else was looking and put it in the dustbin. His family found the turd which led them to believe they were bewitched, a demon in their home while in reality, Noah just needed to relieve himself. This caused outrage in the household and led the family to pray for the abolishment of the demon. He writes “ ‘Yes!’ my mother said. ‘Help us! Pray, Trevor. Pray to God to kill this demon!’ I was terrified. I believed in the power of prayer. I knew that my prayers worked. So if I prayed to God to kill the thing that left the shit, and the thing that left the shit was me, then God was going to kill me. I froze. I didn't know what to do. But all the grannies were looking at me, waiting for me to pray, so I prayed, stumbling through the best I could” (Noah 46-47). This satire mocks the belief in religion. It illustrates that even when a simple event such as a turd is found in the kitchen, Noah’s family jumps directly into spirituality. A demon is in our home, and even if a demon were to be present, how would they even defecate and hide it in a dustbin? Noah’s family leaps towards religion instead of finding who left the turd there, overlooking the 5-year-old Noah who did in fact, left his stool in the dustbin. The satire achieves comedy as we know reading that Noah pooped in the kitchen to avoid getting wet and tried to hide the evidence. Once they got the family and neighbors in the home to pray, Noah was to be at the mercy of himself to seek the punishment that he would be asking, despite Noah not believing in