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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. 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 | My first one of the year is a nice little short essay of sorts on Kincaid's homeland of Antigua. This book was the first I have read by Kincaid, but I also have her book My Brother that I am sure to get around to soon. I found this little essay far from surprising in its content - corruption in many recently independent governments is nothing new - but I admire the woman's voice and look forward to experiencing it soon. I know I need to read Annie John, but I have not yet found the time to procure it yet. ( ) cinesnail88 | Jan 1, 2008 | 
 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.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374527075, Paperback)A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John "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. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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