In these lie my
story - of separation from my 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

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.