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Afrikaners
A cramped, poor, black township in Johannesburg. Because it is surrounded by wealthier white areas, it cannot expand, unlike Soweto. After high school, Trevor spends a year hanging out with Sizwe in Alexandra, selling pirated CDs.
Alexandra (Alex) Quotes in Born a Crime
The Born a Crime quotes below are all either spoken by Alexandra (Alex) or refer to Alexandra (Alex). For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3 Quotes
There is something magical about Soweto. Yes, it was a prison designed by our oppressors, but it also gave us a sense of self-determination and control. Soweto was ours. It had an aspirational quality that you don't find elsewhere. In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto.
For the million people who lived in Soweto, there were no stores, no bars, no restaurants. There were no paved roads, minimal electricity, inadequate sewerage. But when you put one million people together in one place, they find a way to make a life for themselves. A black-market economy rose up, with every type of business being run out of someone's house: auto mechanics, day cafe, guys selling refurbished tires.
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Soweto, where Trevor’s mother grows up and his grandmother still lives to this day, is a township outside Johannesburg, effectively an area outside the city center that was designated for black South Africans during apartheid and then built with dismal facilities by the government. This is the tragedy of Soweto: people were given nothing, not allowed to leave, and treated as a constant possible threat (the township has limited routes in and out, Trevor notes, so that the government can bomb it and trap people inside to put down protests). Yet this origin story also creates the “something magical” in Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Qui
Chapter 16 Quotes
It's easy to be judgmental about crime when you live in a world wealthy enough to be removed from it. But the hood taught me that everyone has different notions of right and wrong, different definitions of what constitutes crime, and what level of crime they're willing to participate in.
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After high school, true to form and much like his mother, Trevor continues to question conventional notions of right and wrong from an ethical perspective. Busy selling pirated CDs and secondhand (usually stolen) goods in the crowded, poor slum of Alexandra with his friend Sizwe, he sees firsthand how poverty creates desperation and drives people to crime, as well as how the legal system as a whole systematically punishes the poorest, blackest segments of South African society precisely when they act out of desperation. Indeed, since both black poverty and white property are the legacies of centuries of colonialism and Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tem
In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don't see the person it affects. We don't see their face. We don't see them as people. Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don’t see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don't live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another's pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.
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Although Trevor initially considers selling stolen goods in Alexandra justifiable, after he buys a camera and finds a white family’s vacation photos on it, Trevor realizes he is stealing their memories in addition to a material object and begins to feel that there is something wrong with this work. The camera roll shows him “the ramifications of what [he does] to others” and forces him to see that his victims are not just anonymous white people who will turn out fine, but other humans with full emotional lives who are likely to feel a deep sense of loss at their Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto v
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Alexandra (Alex) Term Timeline in Born a Crime
The timeline below shows where the term Alexandra (Alex) appears in Born a Crime. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 15
...recommends that Trevor start DJing. Sizwe lives in the dense, dangerous, and hard-partying shantytown of Alexandra; in Alex, unless “someone gets shot or a bottle gets broken on someone’s face […]...
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Chapter 16
In his brief preface, Noah outlines the history of Alexandra, which was originally a white man’s farm. But this farmer sold his land to blacks...
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...who brought out the best in everybody,” which makes him immensely popular. He lives in Alexandra, but Trevor seldom goes there until after high school, when suddenly being from “the hood”...
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Alexandra itself is “a hive of constant human activity,” with a chaotic energy that “erupts periodically...
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...needs to make money to afford university tuition, so he decides to sell CDs in Alexandra, where minibus drivers buy their music (which they value as a way to attract customers)...
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In Alexandra “there is a very fine line between civilian and criminal”; friends become gangsters and gangsters...
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Every day, Trevor takes the bus into Alex with Sizwe and sets up shop at his house. They eat breakfast and take orders...
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...effort put into minimal gain,” like wasting time on the internet instead of reading books. Alexandra’s real draws are the acceptance—there are few colored people there, but “the hood doesn’t judge”—and...
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Trevor is DJing a party in a nice black suburb near Alexandra; the police come in on a noise complaint, brandishing machine guns and ordering Trevor to...
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...knows whose it is; a cop hits them all and calls them “trash,” “dogs from Alex […] bunch of fucking hoodlums.” He insists that they are going to jail, and they...
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Chapter 17
...parents, she tries “to discipline [him] before the system does.” Getting arrested is commonplace in Alex, and Patricia hates that Trevor hangs out there, especially because “it didn’t pressure [him] to...
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