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Loading... A Small Placeby Jamaica Kincaid
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A Small Place is an extended essay by Kincaid on her native Antigua, one which manages to be at once both scathing and insightful. Despite its brevity, Kincaid manages to take on such issues as Antigua's colonial past; the impact of tourism by mostly white, wealthy tourists on its present; and the dependence wrought by big business and global corruption with insight and clarity. Given that I am myself white and western, this was not an easy read—Kincaid is acerbic and angry, and I think justifiably so—but I think very much a worthwhile one. She doesn't offer solutions, but I think A Small Place is worth reading just in order to make one realise that there are questions which need answering. (  ) siriaeve | Nov 23, 2009 |  The setting for [A Small Place], which was written in 1988, is postcolonial Antigua in the mid-1980s, as the narrator speaks to a voiceless North American or European tourist who arrives to her home island of Antigua, "a small place, nine miles wide by twelve miles long", whose beauty is contrasted by its dilapidated buildings and bad roads. The tourist is given an unsparing view of the island's inequality, poverty and corruption, and much of the blame for Antigua's situation is laid on the former British colonists, and indirectly on the unwanted and unloved visitor. The essay ends with a brief love note by the narrator to her homeland, and we are left with a sense of hope for the future. (  )1  kidzdoc | Sep 18, 2009 | Amazingly insightful about Antigua and the problems they face as a tourist island, replete with postcolonialism, poverty, and rampant corruption in the government. Kincaid doesn't necessarily offer solutions, other than in pointing out the problems she sees (that could be applied to most cultures & countries that are visited by non-stop tourists). You get a definite sense of her love for Antigua, but also her anguish over its perceived issues. Great and insightful read. ( )1 mjmbecky | May 25, 2009 | always interesting on her heritage. (  ) mahallett | Apr 26, 2009 | A thoughtful essay, it both inspires and is full of ire. ( ) kleahey | Jan 27, 2009 | 
 There are places worth revisiting not to relive joyful memories, but to allow for the catharsis that comes from exposing festering wounds so that cleansing, and perhaps healing, can begin. This is the kind of journey Jamaica Kincaid allows us to witness. In this essay, orginally published in 1988 and recently released in paperback, she takes us behind idyllic countrysides and sun-kissed beaches to examine the underbelly of life in Antigua, the tiny island in the West Indies where she grew up. It is a place she lovingly describes as "too beautiful. But Antigua also elicits bitter memories for our tour guide, who makes it clear she has an ax to grind in this short but powerful billyclub of a book.
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400)
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