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DDC/MDS
F2035.K56 |
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From the award-winning author of Annie John comes a brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua. 'If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the prime minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a prime minister would want an airport named after him-why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen ...' So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up. Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.… (more)
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The first essay is addressed directly to those who visit the island for a holiday. It's sarcastic and has a
Kincaid then goes on to write about the Antigua she grew up in, with its streets named after English 'maritime criminals' such as Horatio Nelson and the branch of Barclays Bank (founded by slave-traders), and the casual racism and cultural oppression of the British - making Queen Victoria's birthday an official holiday, for example. But she isn't afraid of criticising her fellow country people: 'We didn't say to ourselves, Hasn't this extremely unappealing person been dead for years and years? Instead, we were happy for a holiday.'
In the third essay, Kincaid sharpens this focus on the Antiguans themselves, asking 'Is the Antigua I see before me, self-ruled, a worse place than when it was dominated by the bad-minded English?'. She uses the image of her local library, damaged in an earthquake in 1974 and still left unrepaired at the time of writing in 1988, as a symbol of the political indifference and wekaness.
A Small Place was an uncomfortable read - exactly what Kincaid must have set out to achieve - but it isn't preachy or boring. It's the kind of book that a large part of the British and American populations (especially politicians) should be made to read.
But no. No. That’s not it. I mean, she is upset by the tourists but no, that’s not really the problem, this thing about how out-of-place the tourists are in this “small place” they treat as their own place. And while Antigua is a small place, and is her subject, the physical smallness is not her subject either.
The problem Kincaid is addressing is the smallness of place most Antiguans have in Antigua, the consciousness of that small place they have in comparison to the Europeans and North Americans there, in the small place that supposedly is their own.
To her mind and heart the situation is one from which she sees no justice issue, not from the foreign investors, the tourist economy, or her fellow citizens in government acting to procure riches and status for themselves alone. Kincaid is outraged, aghast, contemptuous, caustic, strident, vehement, accusatory. She repeatedly is witness to what is comic but what good is comedy without the reward brought by laughter and smiles? Bitter comedy it is.
She personalizes this in a gentler way, a way a book lover will appreciate, by expressing her love for a library:
“But if you saw the old library, situated as it was, in a big, old wooden building painted a shade of yellow that is beautiful to people like me, with its wide veranda, its big, always open windows, its rows and rows of shelves filled with books, its beautiful wooden tables and chairs for sitting and reading, if you could hear the sound of its quietness (for the quiet in this library was a sound in itself), the smell of the sea (which was a stone’s throw away), the heat of the sun (no building could protect us from that), the beauty of us sitting there like communicants at an altar, taking in, again and again, the fairy tale of how we met you, your right to do the things you did, how beautiful you were, are, and always will be; if you could see all of that in just one glimpse, you would see why my heart would break at the dung heap that now passes for a library in Antigua. The place where the library is now, above the dry-goods store, in the old run-down concrete building, is too small to hold all the books from the old building, and so most of the books, instead of being on their nice shelves, resting comfortably, waiting to acquaint me with you in all your greatness, are in cardboard boxes in a room, gathering mildew, or dust, or ruin.”
Imagine, then, will you, any one thing you ought to love best, would love best if it were possible. Further, imagine losing faith it can become possible. How would you feel? Read A Small Place with that thought dwelling in your imagination. Consider how impoverishing it would be to feel differently than does Jamaica Kincaid.
The problem with fictions, including memoirs, is that it’s the author’s truth – or opinion. I don’t dispute Kincaid’s facts. It is decidedly one sided, and I prefer a more balanced view. There is a lot of anger towards the English for their empire days and their innate racism telling the Antiguans to stop behaving like monkeys on trees. In between the negativity suggested more freedom then than now, plus a majestic library which never hurts. There is just as much, possibly more, anger towards the corrupt ministers who enabled foreigners to make money off Antigua or funded job promises that never materialized. Yet she also expressed mockery towards the honest ministers – one who became a pauper and one who now drives a taxi.
Not surprisingly, there are zingers throughout such as “…in a country that had less liberty than it used to have, Liberty Weekend was celebrated. In countries that have no culture or are afraid they may have no culture, there is a Minister of Culture.” And “You must not wonder what exactly happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it… Oh, it might all end up in the water you are thinking of taking a swim in; the contents of your lavatory might, just might, graze gently against your ankle as you wade carefree in the water, for you see, in Antigua, there is no proper sewage-disposal system.” If it’s not obvious, she hates tourists! “And 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, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you…” But for a country without any other industries, what miraculous economy is she expecting?
Undoubtedly, she has a lot of passion for her home country, rightfully so. Everyone should, and I’m glad she defended its unreal beauty. I wish she defended the people too, at least the ordinary, honest people, such as herself, but she mocks those too. “All slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted… Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.” Perhaps this is her defense that the corrupt ministers are only human beings… flawed human beings.
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
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
Kincaid discusses politicians who had automatic green cards in
I know little about the history of Antigua specifically, and this was a very interesting read. It would go well with a more academic (and less sarcastic/sardonic) history of the island.
A Small Place is a powerful exploration of Kincaid's home, the island of Antigua. Colonized by the British in 1632, and left in the hands of tourists and a corrupt government, Antigua is portrayed as a land of damaged beauty. A Small Place is an indictment against colonialism, capitalism, complacency, and so much more. Kincaid spares no punches; her lens is wide, but exact. Her outrage and rhythmic exploration of the island make this impassioned essay searing with pride and indignation. A Small Place is a Caribbean answer to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time; Kincaid's prose rises with a voice that rivals Baldwin's. While Baldwin offered hope and solutions, however, Kincaid largely focuses on the sources of the many problems.
I don't know what to expect from Kincaid's more popular fiction, but if it's anything like this, it will be incredibly poetic and powerful. I look forward to it.