Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place

Trask is able to use logos to prove how tourism has affected the Hawaiian culture. Trask refers to Hawaii as a “She” who “Rubs off” on the visitor with her magical presence. The beauty of Hawaii is used as an escape from “Rawness and violence” for most Americans though, Trask mentions that the land has a “Western sexual sickness” (Trask 1993). “Of course, all this hype is necessary to hide the truth about tourism, the awful exploitative truth that the industry is the major cause of environmental degradation, low wages, land dispossession, and the highest cost of living in the United States” (Trask 1993). Trask says that the areas of Hawaii which were “sacred” to the Hawaiian’s have now been turned into top of the line hotels. The beaches that were once full of fishermen and their nets are used for recreational activities like surfing getting a tan and jet skiing. On most of the beaches owned by resorts, the beaches are reserved for hotel residences only. In the essay, Trask gives the readers logos as to how tourism is changing the land. For example, thirty years ago the ratio of Hawaiians outnumbered the tourist 2:1. Today,

As the natives are forced to adapt to the colonizer’s more civilized lifestyle, the rich and

Gentle waves, lush greenery, and sun-soaked beaches, Antigua embodies your ideal holiday destination. But Jamaica Kincaid turns your paradise upside down in her new memoir A Small Place. Using her pen as a sword, Kincaid slashes Antigua’s façade of perfection into shreds and presses the blade against the throats of tourism, colonialism and corruption.

In “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, we have a mother conveying important life advice to her daughter in order for her to adapt to cultural customs and most important to learn the rules of social behavior. Her mother's advice is not only intentionally told in order for her to become the proper antiguan woman she believes in raising, but is also told to criticize her actions and everyday doings. Her mother makes it very clear, in order to live a proper antiguan life, there are many rules that one must follow. With deeper interpretation of Kincaid’s work we come to the realization that her overall message suggests the idea that women as a whole should be domestic and should behave a certain way in our society in order to avoid being viewed as a promiscuous woman.

Kincaid clearly attacks the tourists for not understanding the value of Antigua and its heritage; they are “ugly human being(s)” (115) because of their ignorance. The vacant gazers are ugly because when they have reached the zenith of banality in their own lives, they use the poverty of the natives of a tourist destination like Antigua to feel better about themselves; the natives’ lack of wealth, opportunities and education all make that pasty-skinned tourist feel superior. The ugliness stems from the tourist’s use of the native’s backwardness to propel themselves forward.

Antigua is a beautiful island in the Caribbean that got its name from Christopher Columbus in 1493 when he first visited the small 108 square mile island (Niddrie). Antigua was later colonized by England in 1632, and won its independence in 1981 (Niddrie). Antigua was originally a country that was planned as a slave-breeding colony, but never became one; the slaves who were imported came to live self-reliantly in their own community (Niddrie). After, Antigua gained its independence; it established a constitutional monarchy, where the British monarch is still head of state, represented by a governor general (Niddrie). Sadly, Antigua is an impoverished country that has a history of being a victim of British imperialism, government corruption, and tourism (Kincaid). Kincaid informs her audience

To begin, Kincaid uses emotional appeal throughout the essay to further her argument. She begins by painting the audience a picture of themselves in their everyday life. Walking with an everyday crowd, they begin to realize “how alone you feel in this crowd, how awful it is to go unnoticed, how awful it is to go unloved” (Kincaid 206). Kincaid starts off her piece by making her audience feel isolated and alone, setting the tone for the rest of the piece. She makes the everyday audience, who can afford to escape their everyday life, feel unappreciative of their situation. This furthers her argument by making the audience feel poorly about things they may take for granted, that many natives from poorer countries cannot afford. They may have the luxury to travel outside of their bubble, while natives do not have the same luxury as them. In addition, Kincaid makes the reader feel embarrassed. Kincaid restates, “An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there… behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness” (207). She gives the reader the idea that the natives are mocking tourists because they are not familiar with their surroundings. Where people should feel the joy of exploring new places, Kincaid

Hawaii is a beautiful island and it didn’t take long for people to realize it could be a lucrative business venture. Hawaii’s tourism began, as “bourgeois desires for contact with the rejuvenating "primitive"” became something that interested

It was very impactful being put in the tourist seat while reading this novel. In the beginning of the story as the tourist i am being exposed to all this negativity which i came here in the first place to avoid. Kincaid tells us that everyone has new cars here because it is really easy to get loans from the bank. This left

This is the message Kincaid, conveyed, when she expresses how tourist “marveled” at how in tune the Antiguans are with nature and how they are able to take simple things and create useful things and she tells the tourist that what you surprised at, the only reason why we are left in this state serving you because we don’t have the resource to escape our realities is because your ancenstors enslave us and left us poor that they benefited from. So you the tourist come, leaving your luxurious life to enjoy a pleasureable vacation all at the hands of the poor

To the above point, one of the reasons that Antigua is a destination for tourists is because of its aforementioned aesthetic beauty. Antigua’s beauty belies the reality of the situation that the people have, but it is not something that tourists should feel any responsibility to change. More to the point, Antigua’s beauty is one of the reasons that tourists should not be challenged. Indeed, tourists have no reason to believe that the people of Antigua are miserable because of the beauty of the land and the hard work that the people of Antigua put in to make sure that the tourists have a good time (even if the tourists acknowledge that the workers may be poor). One example of how Kincaid’s argument is flawed is when she says that tourists appreciate the fact that Antigua has no rain, when the lack of rain actually leads to droughts which negatively affect the natives in the long-term. Kincaid’s discussion of rain is representative of the difference between her perspective and the perspective of the tourist. The tourist has no stake in Antigua beyond how it profiles as a vacation

"It's shit being Scottish! We're the scum of the fucking earth! Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We're the ones what were colonised by wankers. We couldn't even pick a decent bunch of people to be colonised by."

In part one of A Small Place, Kincaid tries to persuade the readers, she does this by talking directly to them. Kincaid says that the tourists ruin the culture and that they are not justified in coming to Antigua for a vacation. Kincaid thinks that tourism is ugly, “an ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist”(Kincaid 17). Kincaid is trying to persuade the reader instead of informing them with a fact or observation. This direct use of second person is successful to persuade the reader. It is successful because the reader might feel guilty for traveling and might change his or her perspective on traveling.

From the start of “A Small Place,” the author establishes an unsettling position for the reader by using second person perspective to give the audience a personal experience, “The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being” (Kincaid, 14). The act of being the tourist in respect to Kincaid's statement is being unaware of the surroundings and people who reside in this country you refer to as a paradise. She pushes the audience out of their comfort zone to an unsettling acknowledgment of ignorance - if you have traveled and expressed these behaviors. The author presents the idea that the act of traveling with the mindset that indigenous people are benefiting is a form of self-justification rather than reality. Kincaid acknowledges the audience’s ignorance of the situation as an institutional one that educated you to have this mindset. She describes this situation the people of Antigua endured, as something you were not taught, which exonerates your oblivious demeanor toward your surroundings,

Situated in the context of Jamaica’s colonial past, Black provides a meaningful foundation for the discourse of debt and development in Jamaica. In so doing, she asks her audience—most likely intended for young and well-off U.S. citizens—to think critically about tourism in developing countries and the effects of U.S. international involvement. Throughout this expose of exploitative U.S. involvement, Black highlights the resilience of those suffering from IMF reforms. The film uses juxtaposition to blames the IMF for the deteriorating situation in Jamaica. In one scene, Black shows the U.S. hypocrisy of forcing Jamaican to lower tariffs while flooding their market with highly subsidized powdered milk. Subsequently, Black cuts to an interview with a representative from the IMF who continues to justice these policies despite realities on the ground. Moreover, the film questions the Western assumption that its current economic model is the best. To be sure, the U.S. has not always pursued a global integrated economic platform. For many years, the U.S. was highly isolationist as it industrialized and built up national