In the following recollections, divided into several chapters, Azly Rahman presents a mixed-genre memoir-snippets of growing up in a world rooted in the pastoral-ness and ruralness of things. The world of his kampong or the Malay village. These are stories of separation – of a mind from the body. Of the body from consciousness. Of spiritual consciousness from the reality of things. In these lie the author’s story – of separation from his tribe, so to speak. Of culture, its constructions, and complexities. The strange and the familiar has become me. Of the anthropology of the self, globalized in all its absurdities. The central theme is ‘growing up gangsta’ in a Malay village that offered the realism and the supernaturalism of things, seen through the lens of a boy in his early teens.
Through the shifting of the narration of the here and then, through poems, rapping verses, and ethnographic notes, he makes the stories accessible to readers of the English-speaking world, primarily in the United States where the author now resides and teaches. It is a story of ‘boy meeting the strange part of his Malay world’ yet rooted in his mother’s love as an inner guide, and sanity.
Published: May/2021
ISBN: 9789814882118
Length: 224 Pages
