A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid - Analysis

Jamaica Kincaid

Style

·       Addressing the reader

·       Run on sentences

·       Sarcasm

·       Accusatory tone, hostility

Themes

·       Discrepancy between living in Antigua and coming there as a tourist

·       Difference between Antigua and America

·       Cheating tourists

·       Search for authenticity

·       Government corruption in Antigua

·       The paradoxical influence of the british over Antiguans – they wanted and got independence but have deteriorated and become corrupted since

·       Racial guilt transferred down generations

·       Affluent people are foreigners and drug smugglers

·       Weather as friend or foe

·       Difference between tourism and homelife

·       Closed-mindedness of locals

·       Native resentment of tourists stems from their own desire to be a tourist but their inability to do so

·        Accusing the criminal in the criminal's language is problematic

·       The ubiquity of English influences in Antigua

·       Seeming authentic beauty of poverty

Response to the text and remarks

A "real"/realistic travel guide

What Kincaid thinks of the tourists, all of them

The tourist's self involvement

By “Nice person, ugly person” – I think she implies that in fact we are all ugly always but tourism makes it obvious because we are amongst others, and not among like-minded people who give us the stamp of approval that makes us think we're cool

Appropriation

Tourism as a solution to a feeling of not fitting in

Ironic or not? Must be, generalization usually is. Also, once they are no longer slaves, the islanders have new problems to contend with.