Review: A Small Place By Jamaica Kincaid

What would he think of our noisy Chinese relative who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food (74). But as Tan grows older she begins to realize that giving up her Chinese heritage for more American customs is not what she truly wants in life. Similarly, “Museum” by Naomi Shihab Nye conceals irony in the authors thoughts. Nye thinks that mistaking the strangers home for the McNay was a big mistake in her young life. But as it turns out this “mistake” unintentionally taught a valuable lesson to the residents of the home. This is reveled to the reader by Nye through a quote from one of the residents “That was my home. I was a teenager sitting with my family talking in the living room. Before you came over, I never realized what a beautiful place I lived in. I never felt lucky before” (80). Including these traces of irony helps add character and comedy to the already entertaining articles.

Kincaid gives an example of this in the novel,” you make a leap from being that nice blob just sitting like a boob in your amniotic sac of the modern experience to being a person visiting heaps of death and ruin and feeling alive and inspired at the sight of it…” (Kincaid 16). The quote basically is suggesting that when people become tourist they do not consider the poverty or infrastructure of the place they are going to. Kincaid implies that when they tourist see the poverty, and the dilapidated infrastructure they feel good about themselves. The tourist feels like they have it better than the people living on the island of Antigua. This quote relates to tourism being a new form of colonialism because it relates to how the colonizers felt that the natives were beneath them. During colonialism and slavery, the natives lived in dilapidated housing, they had the minimum resources to survive. Tourism also exploits the native culture in m any other ways

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,

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.

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

5. "You Are a Tourist" “When there’s a burning in your heart,” words of someone who is fleeing home for the first

Bill Bryson sets out on a journey in the travel novel, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America. Bryson is inspired by the media exposure as a young boy that depicted a “perfect town,” characterized by friendly merchants, a courthouse square, pretty houses, a paperboy delivering the newspapers, a man sweeping the sidewalk of his store, and the two men in suits walking by. Returning home from England, he goes in search of this “perfect town,” simultaneously allowing the readers to realize that while traveling we are able to make discoveries about ourselves and our world around us if we simply, take the time to stop and look around. On a trip to Ohio in celebration of my cousin’s christening, I learned something important. Sitting around

Minh has assumed the roles of both a tourist and tour guide. He travels to the places that he views as rich in opportunities: the attractions. My cousin is in control of his own path, and will strive to understand the way of life of others in those various locations. In embarking on his endeavors, Minh has truly learned to appreciate other cultures, thus expanding the scope of his worldview. There remains one final destination for him to complete his

Throughout the film, it can be seen in a somewhat ironic way the contrast of the country from the tourists and locals’ perspectives. Tourists are only enjoying

In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid address the reader with the personal you, allowing all previous conversations, theories, lessons and other forms of information and education about the Caribbean to really The tourist is who Jamaica Kincaid writes to in her open letter styled work called A Small Place. The tourist is blind, both voluntarily and involuntarily, to the many problems their destinations experience and the problems caused by their visit to said destinations. Towards the end of A Small Place, Kincaid elaborates what she means about what a tourist is. She calls tourists ‘ugly human beings’ (14) due to the enjoyment the tourist extracts from ‘exoticism’ of the Caribbean. The ways of life in the Caribbean would disgust and be openly

A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid, tells the history of a small postcolonial island called Antigua, which is located in the Caribbean. In this nonfictional text, published in 1988, Kincaid examines the challenges that Antiguans were left to deal with after the English left and in her writing Kincaid reveals how European colonization left Antigua with injustice, corruption, and poverty. The book is sectioned off into four parts. The first part focuses on tourism, the second part studies the colonial legacy of the island, part three talks about the political situation of the island, and part four expresses some hope for the future. Throughout the book, Jamaica Kincaid makes it very clear that she does not approve of tourists by saying things such as, “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 to gaze at this and taste that…”

“A Small Place” by Elaine Potter Richardson depicts different versions of Antigua viewed through four separate narratives. During her tour she sees the beauty of the island through a tourist’s eyes as well as the misery in the island’s history. Then she recounts her personal memories of when she lived in Antigua while it was occupied by the British, detailing the racism introduced into the society and how the constant years of colonial repression led the country into the impoverished state it is in. She also mentions how language is an important symbol in recognizing the obligation by their enslaver to assimilate. This is a statement I agreed with because when I visited the Caribbean it was interesting to me that they had taken English and

The idea of traveling to a new country to explore different types of cultures has the ability to be a very exciting experience. From the abundance of new sights to see and food to taste, one can become caught up in all the hustle and bustle of locals. While exposure to an unfamiliar place is thrilling, one’s abrupt immersion into a completely foreign country tends to prove rather exhausting when it comes to beginning a completely new life. This quick change of pace from a familiar environment to, what feels like, another planet can be quite overwhelming. The theme of displacement while abroad, specifically in Paris, is evident in Jean Rhys’ novel Good Morning, Midnight and Joanna Walsh’s novel Vertigo. Rhys and Walsh both illustrate novels

The Caribbean is a popular area to vacation and visit. The great weather, the beautiful scenery, and endless resorts that people can choose from create an attractive destination. Once on the island, tourist are graced with an amazing view of the island, great customer service, and remarkable accommodations. Yet, at what cost? Typically, a tourist would answer with the response of money and time being the cost. But, how do islanders feel; at what expense must temporal pleasures be bought for tourists? In her story, A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid defines tourists as, “ugly things” because tourist visit islands to escape their mundane lives while islanders do not have the same luxury to watch other peoples lives like a spectacle at their disposal (14). Other stories such as “Visiting”, by Roger McTair, and articles such as “It’s Time to Take the Virgin Islands Out of the Closet,” by Devin Robinson, share similar and eye-opening dilemmas derived from tourist marginalizing islanders and the deceitful nature that attracts tourists. The relationship between islanders and tourists is growing increasingly bitter due to the causes of islanders being envious of tourists’ affluence, resorts being deceptive in what the islands have to offer (and what they consist of), and tourists marginalize islanders into the sole purpose of pleasing them and enhancing their ‘Caribbean’ experience.

Kincaid wrote A Small Place after she had left the island nineteen years ago. During this period, she had been a creative writer living permanently in the United States. She had spent much of her time on the island. Her hostile verbal talk after coming back to the island is an indication of how she is both a tourist and native as she claims ‘every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere’(Kincaid,18). She beautifully describes Antigua and describes it as a place where the sky and sea meet to exaggerate the island’s surrealism. It shows that attachment place. Her style makes me recall my childhood and teenage experiences of living in Fort Payne that helped shape my identity. Kincaid’s style of writing establishes an intriguing reflection journey for the reader to undergo.