"A Small Place" Identity

Reading “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid the reader can see how important the importance of the identity is to her. In this work Jamaica describes how the identity of the Antiguan people has been affected by the colonial status of the Island after the English Invasion. In much parts of her work the reader can see how mad Jamaica feel of this cultural change happening in Antigua and she don’t only get mad at the English, but also get mad at the Antiguan people for not been able to open their eyes and see what the English is doing and had done to the culture in Antigua. According to Jamaica the has been so much that the people living in Antigua don’t know what they are and also they don’t realize that their living under an invasion.

 

 She also gets mad at the tourist for only focusing in the “beautiful” part of Antigua and not seeing what is behind. A tourist is a person that travel for pleasure and have a good time, so I don’t think that is a necessity for a tourist to focus on the negative aspect of a place when it travels. In Puerto Rico we can see the same that at this work by Jamaica Kincaid. This island have great thing to admire like their beaches, forests and cultural places that can catch the attention of any tourist, but I think is selfish attitude to expect that a tourist need to focus on the negative aspect of a place when the main purpose for the is to have a pleasant moment of relaxation. I can understand the point of Jamaica where she is looking for the attention of the people on the exterior to see how is the situation in Antigua and maybe do something about it, but insulting the tourist is not the way of solving a such complex theme like is this one.

"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.