Kampung Boy

AUTHOR: Lat

ARTIST: Lat (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Berita

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1979

Publication History

Kampung Boy was first published in 1979 by the Malaysian company Berita Publishing, under the title The Kampung Boy. Lat, whose real name is Mohammad Nor Khalid, was already a well-known editorial cartoonist, and his cartoons had been compiled and published in book form. The Kampung Boy was the first book he designed as an extended narrative and that featured new material. The idea for the graphic novel came to Lat in 1977, when he was visiting the United States and was suddenly struck by nostalgia for the village, or kampung, where he was born and raised. He worked on the project intermittently for two years. Upon its release, The Kampung Boy became an instant best seller. It has been reprinted multiple times and remains immensely popular in Malaysia. Town Boy, the sequel to Kampung Boy, was published in 1981. Another follow-up, Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today, was released in 1993.

Lat wrote The Kampung Boy in English and handpicked his friend Zainon Ahmad to do the Malay translation. The Malay edition, entitled Baduk Kampung, was also released by Berita Publishing. The graphic novel has also been translated into Japanese, French, Portuguese, and German. In 2006, First Second Books released an American edition entitled Kampung Boy. First Second is the graphic novel imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrink Publishers that specializes in books for children and young adults. The American editors made few changes to the original version, with most alterations involving changing British English to American English.

Plot

Consisting of a series of anecdotes, Kampung Boy describes the rituals and day-to-day experiences that characterize boyhood in a small Malaysian village. The graphic novel relates the story of Mat, a young Muslim boy, who is born and raised in the kampung. As a toddler, Mat is confined to the family’s housing compound. One day, he sneaks off the property to investigate the tin dredge, which he has never seen but always hears roaring in the distance. The enormous dredge appears monstrous to him. His mother is infuriated by his disobedience, and she punishes him.

At the age of six, Mat begins attending Tajwid classes to learn how to enunciate Arabic words properly and thus read the Quran. Mat meets the three Meor brothers, and he is impressed by the brothers’ sense of adventure and their experience with swimming and fishing. As the years pass, Mat begins to take on more responsibilities at home as well as at the mosque, and he also starts spending more time with the Meor brothers, who are often up to mischief. Mat’s parents worry that the brothers are distracting Mat from his studies.

Just before he turns ten, Mat and two of his cousins undergo the ritual of circumcision, which takes place in his grandmother’s house. The villagers arrive to celebrate the ceremony. The nervous Mat finds the circumcision itself to be quick and virtually painless.

Mat learns that the Meor brothers have started dulang-washing, or panning for tin. Dulang-washing was considered illegal because it disrupted the operations of the tin company, but it is a good way to make money, and Mat enthusiastically joins the brothers in panning for tin. One day, Mat and the Meor brothers are almost caught by the constable. Mat scurries home and excitedly shows the tin he has collected to his father. His father is furious to learn that Mat has been “stealing tin” and he gives his son a beating. Later, he brings Mat to his rubber plantation. He tells his son that the land was his to inherit, but only if he concentrates on his studies and gets admitted to a boarding school in Ipoh. Mat decides to start spending more time studying and less time with the Meor brothers.

Mat’s hard work pays off; he is accepted to the boarding school. He runs home to share the good news, but he sees his father riding off with the land broker. His mother tells him that they were thinking of selling their land to the tin company, because it was rumored that the area was rich with tin.

A few weeks later, it is time for Mat to travel to Ipoh. His family and the Meor brothers take him to the town center for a send-off. Mat suddenly realizes that he will miss his tiny kampung. He wants the kampung to remain unchanged and hopes that the tin company will not find tin on their land. He and his father board the bus. As the bus drives off, Mat looks out the rear window and waves good-bye to his family and friends.

Characters

•Mat, the protagonist, is a short, slightly pudgy boy with wiry limbs. His bushy black hair often covers his eyes. Although he sometimes gets into mischief, he is mostly an obedient boy who fulfills his responsibilities and eventually learns to prioritize school over play. He keeps mostly to himself at school and tends to follow the lead of the Meor brothers.

•Mat’s mother is a somewhat stern woman who hardly smiles and scolds Mat and his father for their misdeeds. Although she is strict, she is also sympathetic toward Mat. She takes care of Mat and his two younger siblings and takes charge of household chores.

•Mat’s father is a large, round man who likes to play with his children and make them laugh. Although he is fun-loving and less strict than Mat’s mother, he is mindful about fulfilling the tasks that Muslim fathers are traditionally expected to perform. He is also deeply concerned about Mat’s future and wants to ensure that his son focuses on his studies.

•Mat’s grandmother is the kampung’s official midwife. She delivers Mat and takes an active part in other rituals that mark his childhood, such as his head-shaving and circumcision.

•The Meor brothers are Mat’s three mischief-making playmates. Although they come in three different sizes, they look alike with their wide, toothy grins and their hair parted in the middle. More confident and experienced than Mat, they act as his mentors and teach him how to swim, fish, and pan for tin.

Artistic Style

Kampung Boy is written in the first person, from the perspective of an adult Mat looking back at his childhood. The text’s font is made to resemble penmanship. The point of view and the font create a sense of a familiarity and intimacy, as if Mat were addressing a close acquaintance and allowing her to view his diary or sketchbook.

Much of the graphic novel’s humor arises from the incongruity between the words and the pictures. The text has a matter-of-fact tone, while the accompanying black-and-white pictures reveal the characters’ comic actions. The pictures also provide parallel narratives that are only hinted at, or not mentioned at all, in the text. Some scenes, for example, show a young girl with curly hair looking in Mat’s direction. She is never alluded to in the text, but the pictures suggest she is a potential romantic interest for Mat. Several wordless sequences also highlight the antic movements of the characters.

The characters are drawn as caricatures, with exaggerated facial features and body shapes. Costumes, objects, buildings, and the rural landscape, however, are drawn in a more realistic and detailed style. Such details not only localize the story but also speak to Lat’s affection for and his interest in faithfully rendering the kampung setting. The setting’s importance is also emphasized by how the characters, including Mat, are often shown to be dwarfed by their surroundings. Mat’s smallness in relation to his environment highlights how he is part of the kampung, rather than independent from it.

Kampung Boy’s horizontal 6 x 8-inch format deviates from the format of most other graphic novels. Lat uses few word balloons and does not enclose the narration in caption boxes. Few pages are divided into panels, with most pages and even double-page spreads serving as panels themselves. The page-as-panel format allows Lat to create detailed and sometimes panoramic backgrounds, enhancing the notion that the kampung, though small, feels like the whole world to its inhabitants.

Themes

Kampung Boy is a coming-of-age story that shows Mat learning how to prioritize between childhood play and the fulfillment of his obligations to his family and himself. Although Mat dutifully accomplishes many of the tasks he is assigned at home, school, and the mosque, he comes to understand that his actions in the present can have consequences for his future. The final sequence of Kampung Boy also suggests that Mat’s education can only continue when he abandons the comfort of his family and his familiar surroundings. To mature and learn, Mat needs to discover and interact with the greater world outside his kampung.

Kampung Boy, however, also romanticizes village life. With its strong tone of nostalgia, the graphic novel depicts life in the kampung as pleasant because it is simple, laid back, and close to nature. The kampung is depicted as the ideal place for a child to grow up. The village is also characterized as a strongly knit community that actively participates in raising its children.

The graphic novel alludes to the tension between village life and modernization. On the one hand, the kampung seems to be left behind by modernization, as even the mail train never stops at the village. On the other hand, the graphic novel also shows that a far-flung kampung cannot escape the changes brought about by modern development. The omnipresent tin dredge shows how business and technology are slowly invading the village and transforming the land and the villagers’ way of life. In one scene, Mat and his father step off the road to make way for a passing car, suggesting that simple kampung life must inevitably give way to modernization.

Impact

A highly acclaimed cartoonist and revered public figure in Malaysia, Lat is considered the father of modern Malaysian cartoons. He first gained popularity during the 1970’s for his editorial cartoons for the New Straits Times. He has published more than twenty books, although Kampung Boy is probably his best-known and beloved work. He enjoys a wide readership in Malaysia as well as in Singapore and Indonesia, and his work has also been merchandised extensively. Despite his immense popularity in parts of Southeast Asia, Lat’s work is not well-known in the United States. The editorial director of First Second Books, Marc Siegel, who first encountered Kampung Boy while growing up in France, published an American edition of Kampung Boy to introduce Lat to readers in the United States.

Lat’s work was partly inspired by his childhood reading of British children’s comics such as The Beano (1938- ) and The Dandy (1937- ). He identifies Malaysian comics pioneers Raja Hamzah and Rejab bin Had as his mentors and British cartoonists Frank Dickens and Ralph Steadman as his influences. Despite his British influences, Lat sought to distinguish his work from the foreign comics and cartoons that filled Malaysian newspapers in the early 1970’s. His single-panel comics series for the New Straits Times, titled Scenes of Malaysian Life, was among the first comics to focus on Malaysian subjects and concerns. He also gave an “Asian look” to his Malay characters, replacing the “big and long noses” typically used in foreign comics with three linked u’s. His work and its local flavor may have helped inspire the humor-magazine boom in Malaysia in the mid-1970’s, and his style has been widely imitated.

Lat has been honored with retrospectives at Malaysia’s National Museum and National Art Gallery. In 1994, the Sultan of Perak conferred the title of Datuk (knighthood) to Lat, in recognition of his artistic contributions. Lat also received the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize for Arts and Culture in 2002. His critical and commercial success has become the benchmark for many aspiring Malaysian cartoonists.

Television Series

Kampung Boy: The Animated Series. Directed by Frank Saperstein. Matinee Entertainment, 1997-1999. While the graphic novel appeals to a more general readership, the animated series is designed for a juvenile audience. Unlike the black-and-white graphic novel, the series is in full color, and characters are drawn in a softer, rounder style. The original 1950’s setting is also updated to present day. Minor characters, such as Mat’s sister, have more prominent roles and have different traits. Mat’s father, for example, provides comic relief as a wacky inventor. In 1999, one of the series’ episodes, “Oh, Tok!,” won an award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Further Reading

Abouet, Marguerite. Aya of Yopougon (2005- ).

Barry, Lynda. One Hundred Demons (2005).

Delisle, Guy. Burma Chronicles (2008).

Bibliography

Campbell, Eddie. “Campbell Interviews Lat: Part 1.” First Second, January 11, 2007. http://firstsecondbooks.typepad.com/mainblog/2007/01/campbell‗interv.html.

Chuen, Ooi Kok. “Lat: Then, Now, and Forever.” New Straits Times, December 27, 2003, p. 5.

Krich, John. “Cartoonists—Malaysia: Lats of Laughs.” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 15, 2004, p. 40.

Lent, John A. “Cartooning in Malaysia and Singapore: The Same, but Different.” International Journal of Comic Art 5, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 256-289.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Varied Drawing Lots of Lat, Malaysian Cartoonist.” The Comics Journal 211 (April, 1999): 35-39.