Kev: Well, not a God send, but yeah. It's 2021, I'm not wearing a pith helmet and demanding their grain. I'd be going on holiday to give them my money. Some fella from Nigeria isn't coming over here to buy a Big Ben statue that'll pay my rent for a month, is he? He's here to undercut our lads to build a garage. The author and narrative voice of A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid, asks readers to imagine themselves as a tourist landing in Antigua for vacation. The tourist takes a taxi to the hotel and passes by crumbling buildings, like the colonial library, which was destroyed in an earthquake over a decade ago. Having rhetorically delivered the tourist to their room, Kincaid ruminates on how tourists—people privileged enough to escape their mundane lives and temporarily enjoy another place without having to experience its troubles—become examples of human ugliness. McLeod, Corinna. "Constructing a Nation: Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place." Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 12.1 (2008): 77–92. Print. A Small Place' is about the effects a past of racist colonialism had on her home, the Caribbean island of Antigua, and the current ongoing corruption from catering to an amoral tourist industry since independence from England. It is a very personal non-fiction essay and memoir, written with no filter or pretense

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Edwards, Justin D. (2007). Understanding Jamaica Kincaid (2007ed.). University of South Carolina Press. p.77. ISBN 9781570036880.Oblomov: I'm good, you lanky sod. I've started a reading challenge I call 'The Drop in the Ocean Project', where I try to read at least one book from every country before I die. Kev: Don't you think that's condescending? What, the 'poor little Antiguans' can't look after themselves? Oblomov: Two seconds, Kev, I need to down this pint before I can stomach talking to you without hitting you with a chair. Oblomov: I never said I was. The book told me next to nothing about Barbuda and other islands that are Antigua's dependencies, and the only thing I know about contemporary Antigua now is the name of the PM and that they finally fixed that library. Hell, I couldn't even have pointed to Antigua on a map till a few days ago, and yet everyone in Antigua knows the country I'm from. The actors switch on an overhead projector and encourage us to imagine on its blank screen the scenes they describe. These include air-conditioned hotel rooms and perfect sea views alongside the island’s grubbier side – the library in disrepair since an earthquake, the broken hospital system and the exclusive members of the Mill Reef Club, where the only local, non-white faces are those of waiting staff.

Kev: I really hate how whenever you talk about our history, you concentrate on the crap stuff. You're a masochist. I mention a funny Churchill quote and you have to bring up how he was sexist, or rascist, or the Bengal famine. You have to bring the mood down, don't you? Oblomov: Oh goody! You're currently channeling the personality of that hypocritical, bigoted team mate from when I worked broadband tech support, the one who gave the dumbest excuse for using a racial slur I've ever heard. Well, since this is my fantasy conversation, I think I'll imagine the invisible Japanese hornets now. Sela, Maya. “An Improbable Story, my Life.” Haaretz. June 16, 2010. Accessed July 31, 2016. http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/an-improbable-story-my-life-1…. Kev: Why read it other than wanting someone to put you down? Just... I don't know, it feels like this really twisted way of claiming you're morally superior by saying you're terrible. White Knighting by slapping your own face. Oblomov: Also, didn't you rave about your missus getting you the complete Auf Wiedersehen, Pet boxset for Christmas?

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But there is an oddity here. Kincaid hints at it when she says, “We felt superior, for we were so much better behaved and we were full of grace, and these people were so badly behaved and they were so completely empty of grace.” The island of Antigua is a very religious place. Its density of Moravian, Baptist, Independent Evangelical, Pentecostal, Adventist, Christadelphian, Methodist, and Anglican churches is remarkable. Christianity dominates the culture of the island. Garner, Dwight. “Jamaica Kincaid.” Salon, January 13, 1996. Accessed July 31, 2016. http://www.salon.com/1996/01/13/kincaid_2/ I found A Small Place to be a provoking and powerful essay. Having never read Kincaid's work before, I am excited to read her novels if they are anywhere near as poignant as this essay. I am also interested to see if one of her novels perhaps is more worthy of inclusion in an anthology of great books by women authors. Jamaica Kincaid is merits reading, especially as I quest to read a diverse selection of authors from around the globe. Jamaica Kincaid’s bio-rant is a catalogue of the residue of slavery in Antiqua - and in the Caribbean and the Americas more generally. What remains from the formal ownership of people by other people is a commercial dominance symbolised most forcefully by tourism. The tourist is the modern liberal, middle-class slave-owner. “A tourist is an ugly human being.” The tourist is hated by the people he exploits just as the slave-owner was hated by the same people.

A Small Place is an unusual novel in that it is written in the second-person perspective, placing the reader, "You", as a tourist who has arrived in Antigua, with Kincaid's voice, the narrator, speaking to you directly. The narrator is a unique force in the story: sometimes, Kincaid merely describes the scenery; sometimes, she provides her own outlook on it; but she also aggressively targets the reader, asking them critical, thought-provoking questions. For this reason, A Small Place is a book that does not merely seek to tell a story, but also fully and completely immerse the reader in the scenes of Antigua. A Small Place' is about the effects a past of racist colonialism had on her home, the Caribbean island of Antigua, and the current ongoing corruption from catering to an amoral tourist industry since independence from England. It is a very personal non-fiction essay and memoir, written with no filter or pretense of fairness or any academic distance. Kincaid remembers Antigua as it was when she was a child, but I think it still today must be basically the way she remembered it in this book, if even more so. It was a small book, but boy, Jamaica Kincaid was angry in this one. The good kind of angry. The James Baldwin writing Dark Days angry. She is simply fed up with the way her country is being treated, and rightfully so. Kev: Cheers, Terry. Look, Ob, I get we messed up in the past. I know we weren't always perfect, I'll admit it, but I still don't get why you want to read something like that. It's like you're wanting her waving a finger at you. 'Yes, Madam, my ancestors were shits, I must forever pay for that time we didn't fix a library! *Kev slaps the table* Oh thank you, Madam, may I have another historical revisionist spanking?!'aNovelists, Antiguan and Barbudan |0https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh88006232 |vBiography. |0https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh99001237

Scene: An empty beer garden. Kev and Oblomov sit down at a small table with a pint each, both in casual wear So much so, I'm currently fantasising about having a pint with an imaginary amalgamation of certain family members and co-workers, either repeating or paraphrasing things they've actually said to me, just to consider how I'd counter their likely 'But Brits good!' criticisms of the book. Kev: Not directly, but it's always implied, isn't it- If you say 'projecting' one more sodding time, your next cider's going in as an enema.Frankly, I suspect she feels about the acts of being positive and hopeful about the future similar as me. It is difficult given the evidence of history and personal experience. Angst and rage are easier to tap, at least for me. Some people are motivators, others of us can only speak to what we have witnessed. Sure, you can steer away from voluntourism and disaster tourism, you can do your best to educate yourself about the country, you can let locals lead but still, you can't ignore the fact that your mere presence there isn't entirely positive. As a tourist, you represent something, your demands mean something and your existence means something. You are privileged, you can easily and sometimes even unknowingly end up exploiting entire nations. Kincaid’s writing is semi-autobiographical, and her focus on colonialism helps deepen Jewish studies on the diasporic condition. Kincaid shares with readers what it is like being displaced, in a clear and embodied experience of diaspora life in exile. According to Kincaid, the cultural imperialism involved in the colonial project robbed her of her capacity for independent sense making, a faculty she considers necessary to the development of agency that might facilitate productive resistance strategies. Kincaid’s critique of colonialism mirrors parallel facets of diasporic phenomena, particularly Jewish ones. Kincaid’s experience as an immigrant to the United States who converted to Judaism as an adult broadens a common Jewish study of the diaspora with her explicit critique of the centrality of colonialism to diaspora.