A Small Place
A Academic, Writing, Nonfiction book. You are not an ugly person all the time; you...
Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, A Small Place magnifies our vision of one small place with Swiftian wit and precision. Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay candidly appraises the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up, and makes palpable the impact of European colonization and tourism. The book is a missive to the traveler, whether American or European, who wants to escape the banality and corruption of some large place. Kincaid, eloquent and resolute, reminds us that the Antiguan people, formerly British subjects, are unable to escape the same drawbacks of their own tiny realm—that behind the benevolent Caribbean scenery are human lives, always complex and often fraught with injustice.
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 81 pages
- ISBN: 9780374527075 / 374527075
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More About A Small Place
That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some nativesmost natives in the worldcannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go... No action in the present is an action planned with a view of its effect on the future. When the future, bearing its own events, arrives, its ancestry is then traced in a trancelike retrospect, at the end of which, their mouths and eyes wide with their astonishment, the people in a small place reveal themselves to be like children being shown the secrets of a magic trick. Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprison and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? Have you ever wondered why it is that all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants? You will have to accept that this is mostly your fault Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place
I read this book years ago, maybe as much as 15 years ago, yet it is one of those books you never forget. This book can change your attitude toward tourism, tourists, and disenfranchisement. It changed me, my idea of what tourism was, who tourists were , but most of all it directed my attention to the "native", the persons living where... Not intended for those who struggle to detect sarcasm! Yes this book was written 30 years ago, but wow does it apply to the now. This book is the perfect nugget of a non-fiction essay. Kincaid's prose is sharpened to a razor's edge and polished to feel effortless. Though written in the 1980's, the lessons hold true today for thinking critically about the mess colonialism and globalization has wrought. I was familiar with the opening lines of this book since it...
