A Small Place

Amazing book!

In her book A Small Place the author Jamaica Kincaid reflects on the debilitating impacts of colonialism and slavery on her people, Antiguans. The narrator does not tell her audience, which are tourists, about the beauty of Antigua, the warm and beautiful weather of the country, or the magnificent even about beaches. She straightforwardly confronts her audience as tourists and informs them about their lack of awareness of the corrupt political system in the place they are visiting and the people who suffering consequently from outcomes. She is telling them if they were intelligent enough, they would not travel the long journey from their land to the place of Antigua in order to build up the corrupt political system. In this book, the most important themes that the author deals with are slavery, colonialism, corruption. The country is naturally beautiful and has thriving tourism industry, however, the underlining problems of corrupt system that was inherited from the slavery and colonialism, oppresses its citizens. The deep-rooted negative effects of these two brutal and inhumane systems are still visible in the political and socio economic situations of Antigua. The leaders are corrupt and work based on nepotism and political affiliations (Kincaid, 72). An irrefutable example, which the narrator uses, is the presence of Japanese made cars for taxi drivers. She states the reason why these luxurious and expensive cars are available for the drivers are because the government mandates their purchases and operations (5-6). These cars benefit the members of the government, not the people of Antigua. Her second example for the political corruption is the assignment of the Minister of Culture (46). The irony is that this minister is also the Minister of Education and Sports who controls all these offices for his advantage. She believes these offices exist for the purpose of exploitation and abuse, and not for the benefit of the country. The people of Antigua came out of slavery and colonialism, they still are suffering and are being abused and exploited by their own government.

A Small Place tells the story of the island of Antigua through the eyes of its author, Jamaica Kincaid, an Antiguan now living in the United States. It was originally an essay for The New Yorker, but was rejected, which I guess was good for Kincaid. We start in second person, with Kincaid narrating the arrival of "you," the tourist, on the island of Antigua, and all of the wonderful activities - the beach, the food, the hotel - that you will experience. She then takes a turn towards with the pragmatic, detailing the island's faults that are unseen to the tourist eye, including but not limited to: the island's lack of proper sanitation and health care; the collapse of banking and local food production; hotels enforcing neo-colonialism by training native Antiguans to serve tourists; the corruption of the government, mostly of Syrian descent... If you liked this review, come read more at my blog: http://wp.me/p3Aqzs-hz

An experience written from a viewpoint most tourists have surely never considered. Honest and deep; written concisely and eloquently. The reader gets an eye opener that should permanently change their view. This book was required reading for my child’s Sophmore class in a private girls high school. Thank you to Jamaica Kincaid for giving this perspective to young girls who are future leaders.

I feel like most readers choosing to pick up this book aren't who need to hear what Kincaid has to say but you’ll just have to pass it around to family and friends. Its a short and easy read.

I love this book because it is beautifully written- lyrical, poetic, smart. I think she captures her complicated opinions on the culture and history of Antigua wonderfully. It's a brutally honest book, which I think is refreshing. As far as I know, and I may be wrong, she doesn't really represent this as anything other than her opinion. So by "brutally honest," I don't mean everything in it is true, in a textbook kind of way. I just mean that she expresses an eloquent, honest, complicated, contradictory portrait of how she feels. And the writing is beautiful. It's best described as a "poetic essay." If you're looking for a travel guide or a straight non-fiction history book, this isn't it and it shouldn't be marketed that way. I don't feel strongly about the politics of this book, nor did I feel particularly hated (I'm a white American), but I guess I could see how you might feel that way if you are the sort of person who takes everything personally.

Kincaid offers an honest and more complete view of Antigua than most people are willing to admit. In beautiful logical language, she describes the impossible beauty that was the destruction of Antigua. Open an honest, you walk beside her as she tells you her story. A delight to Read, a small boon filled with enormous ideas and stories.

Title: A Small Place Author: Jamaica Kincaid Stars: 3 & 1/2 (out of 5) Format: Paperback # of Pages/Words: 81/~20,200 Where It Came From: I purchased this novella from Amazon several months ago. It was a required textbook for a special topics course in tourism and communication studies, but it is an enjoyable read nonetheless. While I probably wouldn't have come across it by my own wanderings, I'm glad that I had the chance to experience it. The Review: For a book that just barely breaks 81 pages, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid packs a powerful punch. And whether she simply ran out of things to say (although I highly doubt it) or rather she was simply making a play on her exposition about the island of Antigua as "a small place," the smallness of the book makes it seem much less intimidating and powerful than it is in reality. Kincaid's blunt style offers no warnings, no prefaces, and no excuses, plunging right ahead in the first page into the overarching theme of the book: how white colonization of Antigua has, essentially, destroyed everything that was good and right and true on the island. From paragraph one, Kincaid establishes a second-person POV in which you are placed in the identity of an anonymous tourist visiting Antigua for the first time. From there, it's full steam ahead through what essentially feels like a "declaration of rights and grievances" against the colonial time period in general. I'll admit--after finishing the first chapter, I was sitting neck-deep in a pile of muddy guilt. I wanted to apologize to the Antiguan people for what had been done to them. The power of Kincaid's words lies mainly in the fact that, although the ground-level basis of understanding for slavery and colonization has been thoroughly established (through rhetoric on early American colonization and the Civil War), she presents the reader with a new, underrepresented account of what happened in Antigua. Kincaid's lyrical writing juxtaposes what was (pre-colonization) with what is (post-modernization, if you can even call it that) in a way that draws in even the most politically reluctant reader (such as myself). She doesn't tip-toe around issues of race and politics. Who am I kidding--she stomps all over them like a step team at nationals. And while I absolutely do not discount her outrage, and I am overwhelmingly sorry for and sympathetic to the horrors that the Antiguan people faced at the hands of the Europeans, I couldn't help but feel alienated by the attack-attack-attack mantra that Kincaid adopts throughout the book. She gets so mired down in lamenting the past that she creates a lens with which she views the present and the future. But that's not to say that I didn't appreciate the book. Kincaid's conviction and never-back-down attitude is very much the core of what draws the reader through to the end. It is only the very last section that an element of hope is introduced and Kincaid posits that perhaps the "non-reality" of Antigua might one day become its redemption. Her final lines are justifiably haunting for the clarity they provide concerning humanity: "Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings."* *Quotation used under the fair use exemption of the United States Copyright Act of 1976