"A Small Place"

On this time we had the opportunity to read “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, an Antiguan novelist and essayist. This story is divided in sections where in each one a different theme is discussed. Jamaica describes how great the experience of a tourist in Antigua is, but in counterpart also how the “insiders” or people living in the island live in hard conditions and poverty.  Everything in A Small Place, even the historical text, is filtered through Kincaid’s highly subjective, personal point of view and is mostly told in the first person. She also talks about the corruption in the island and how the government doesn’t care about the civilians on the island and after 10 years of an earthquake, people is still waiting for repairs.

 

On another section Jamaica describes how where her early years on the “old” Antigua, like she called it. In this time Antigua was under the colonial possession of Great Britain. Jamaica talks about how strong were the racism, how the Antiguans were treated as servants to the English and how the Antiguan culture was affected by the English invasion.  Much of the section is concerned with the distortions that colonialism has created in the minds of the Antiguans; Antiguans do not tend to recognize racism as such, says Kincaid, and the bad behavior of individual English people never seems to affect the general reverence for English culture.  For Kincaid, the problem is compounded by the fact that the people of Antigua can express themselves only in the language of those who enslaved and oppressed them. Kincaid’s tone is usually bitter and sarcastic, especially when dealing with Antigua’s colonial past and tourist-driven present. There are more tender moments of melancholy throughout; however, anger is the prevailing mood.