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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2017

By
Catherine Gomes
Edited by
Catherine Gomes
Catherine Gomes
Affiliation:
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University)
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Summary

In his graphic memoir The Kampong Boy (1979), Mohammad Noor Khalid – otherwise better known as Lat, Malaysia's most popular cartoonist – features his experiences growing up in a Malay- Muslim kampong (village) in the rural state of Perak on the Peninsular Malaysia in the 1950s. Lat's memoir is a whimsical ride through the misadventures of a young Muslim boy as he gets into trouble at school, plays with friends in the forbidden tin mines near his kampong, and faces circumcision as part of his religious obligation. Besides being highly entertaining and humorous, Lat's memoir also provides us with a nostalgic account of the strong ties that exist within a kampong community, where people minded each other's business and provided communal support when needed. The Kampong Boy highlights the significance that community has in determining an individual's everyday life. The impact of the kampong communal identity on Lat the protagonist and Lat the author is also present in the sequels, Town Boy (1981) and Kampong Boy: Yesterday and Today (1993). Community, and identifying with community, are very much part of a person's life but there are limits to this, too, as Graham Day articulates in his book Community and Everyday Life:

[Community] refers to those things which people have in common, which bind them together, and give them a sense of belonging with one another. […] But as soon as one tries to specify more firmly what these common bonds are, how they arise, and how they can be sustained, the problems begin. We would not be social beings if we did not feel some sense of identification and solidarity with others around us and share in their experiences and expectations; yet there are limits to how far we can empathize with every one of them, or feel obligated towards them, or look to them for succour and support. As humans, we are boundary- drawing animals, and we erect barriers between ourselves and others, quite as much as we identify with them. The idea of community captures these elements of inclusion and exclusion, pointing towards those who belong together and those who are held apart.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Asia-Pacific in the Age of Transnational Mobility
The Search for Community and Identity on and through Social Media
 , pp. 1 - 16
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2016

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