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A Small Place

Jamaica Kincaid

3.98 · Rating details · 9,363 ratings · 880 reviews

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 ...more

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Paperback, 81 pages

Published April 28th 2000 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published July 1st 1988)

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May 30, 2017 Brina rated it really liked it

Shelves: 500-great-books-women, essays

Jamaica Kincaid is an award winning author and essayist. Her short yet provocative essay A Small Place describing life in her native Antigua has earned inclusion in the book 500 Great Books by Women by Erica Bauermeister. In this essay, Kincaid details foreign presence in Antigua and its influence on her native population.

Kincaid starts her essay describing how one would feel when arriving at Antigua's only airport. A tourist would see a sparkling sea and lush flora but would not notice the lif Jamaica Kincaid is an award winning author and essayist. Her short yet provocative essay A Small Place describing life in her native Antigua has earned inclusion in the book 500 Great Books by Women by Erica Bauermeister. In this essay, Kincaid details foreign presence in Antigua and its influence on her native population.

Kincaid starts her essay describing how one would feel when arriving at Antigua's only airport. A tourist would see a sparkling sea and lush flora but would not notice the life of the island. As in many Caribbean countries, tourists come to use beach resorts away from the everyday life on the island. They see palm trees and sip rum poolside but are not subject to the abject poverty plaguing most people who make Antigua home. As a result, there is a schism between the largely white European and American tourists and the predominately black Antiguan populace. Kincaid likely wrote this to make her readers feel uncomfortable or at least guilty if they have ever taken an island vacation, and only remained on a resort, not pouring money into the island economy.

The main reason Kincaid cites for this schism is that Antigua is largely a country of descendants of slaves, yet has been under British rule and government since the time of the Empire. The British attempted to impart their schools and religion and culture to a population that was nothing like themselves. Kincaid attended a British run school. It was a choice of that or having no future other than marriage and raising children. She points out that most of Antigua is still run this way, and even cites comparisons to the Papa Doc Duvalier regime in Haiti. In other words, Antigua remains a backward society, one that Kincaid would rather not live in.

I found A Small Place to be a provoking and powerful essay. Having never read Kincaid's work before, I am excited to read her novels if they are anywhere near as poignant as this essay. I am also interested to see if one of her novels perhaps is more worthy of inclusion in an anthology of great books by women authors. Jamaica Kincaid is merits reading, especially as I quest to read a diverse selection of authors from around the globe.
4 stars. ...more

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Oct 08, 2019 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: jamaica-kincaid

The obscenity of mass tourism in struggling paradises could not be shown more eloquently than in this short essay on Antigua, told by a native and addressing YOU - the tourist!

What do we actually know of the societies we invade to get our share of sunshine and blue, glittery water? Not that much. What do we actually DO to those societies when we come there for the settings and ignore the inhabitants as mere decoration at best, or as a nuisance at worst if we have a slight problem with (hidden or ...more

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Oct 26, 2019 BlackOxford rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: african-american, caribbean

Holding Retribution

African slavery has produced an inestimable amount of suffering in the world, not only in the past but also as a legacy which just keeps on giving. It continues to humiliate long after it has ceased to incarcerate. Often in the most subtle, and therefore profound, ways, slavery continues to repress and to kill.

Jamaica Kincaid’s bio-rant is a catalogue of the residue of slavery in Antiqua - and in the Caribbean and the Americas more generally. What remains from the formal own Holding Retribution

African slavery has produced an inestimable amount of suffering in the world, not only in the past but also as a legacy which just keeps on giving. It continues to humiliate long after it has ceased to incarcerate. Often in the most subtle, and therefore profound, ways, slavery continues to repress and to kill.

Jamaica Kincaid’s bio-rant is a catalogue of the residue of slavery in Antiqua - and in the Caribbean and the Americas more generally. What remains from the formal ownership of people by other people is a commercial dominance symbolised most forcefully by tourism. The tourist is the modern liberal, middle-class slave-owner. “A tourist is an ugly human being.” The tourist is hated by the people he exploits just as the slave-owner was hated by the same people.

Like his predecessors, the modern owner lives elsewhere - in Europe and North America- and has his gang-bosses ensure the work gets done. The minor organisational innovation is that the bosses are now black rather than white and are called politicians. But the slaves are still tied to the place, unable to move; and they’re still the servants, and field-hands in their own country. Or rather in the country to which they were transported:

“What I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue. (For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?)”

But there is an oddity here. Kincaid hints at it when she says, “We felt superior, for we were so much better behaved and we were full of grace, and these people were so badly behaved and they were so completely empty of grace.” The island of Antigua is a very religious place. Its density of Moravian, Baptist, Independent Evangelical, Pentecostal, Adventist, Christadelphian, Methodist, and Anglican churches is remarkable. Christianity dominates the culture of the island.

And yet Christianity is also the clearest remaining component of the colonial past. Christianity justified the very slavery that caused the African presence on the island. Missionaries were just another fact of the colonial regime. Indeed the colonists were ‘badly behaved’ but was that because or despite their religious sentiments? And is the interpretation given to Christianity by the Antiguans, and other colonised people, superior or simply more naive than that of their former masters? Is this Christianity an example of Nietzsche’s slave-mentality, a way to exercise dominance without undue (and inefficient) violence?

Christianity, as a remnant of salve-owning colonialism, has an interesting political effect. It is often, as in Antigua, shared by an entire population. Its claim for the existence of ‘another world’ is interpreted by the elite as a justification to exploit this one. And, simultaneously, it is interpreted by the exploited as a reason for hope. Christianity thus forms an ideal basis for a culture of continuing slavery. Perhaps Nietzsche wasn’t overstating his case. ...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Chloe rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: people who think that Frantz Fanon was too tame

Shelves: damn-the-man, essays, imperialism, caribbean

Holy vituperative rage, Batman! The descriptions of this book that I had read on Goodreads in no way described the acerbic bitterness of Kincaid as a writer. Each page is one brutal indictment after another. Nothing escapes her ire; from the English masters who colonized the island to the fat and pasty tourists who visit for a chance to sample the "exotic" backwardness of island life and who cluck their tongues reprovingly at the corruption that is endemic to island governance. "Fuck you," she s Holy vituperative rage, Batman! The descriptions of this book that I had read on Goodreads in no way described the acerbic bitterness of Kincaid as a writer. Each page is one brutal indictment after another. Nothing escapes her ire; from the English masters who colonized the island to the fat and pasty tourists who visit for a chance to sample the "exotic" backwardness of island life and who cluck their tongues reprovingly at the corruption that is endemic to island governance. "Fuck you," she says (via my poor paraphrasing), "Of course the government is corrupt- it is modeled in your image. We are only what you made us. It is you who taught us how to rob from our people and deposit their money in off-shore bank accounts. It is your value system that taught us that Capitalism is valued above everything else, even clean water and decent healthcare."

I'd like to give her a hug but that would only be giving her an opportunity to stick the knife deep into my vile honky back. It'd be easy to get wrapped up in her bilious venting at the expense of her message, but this would be a criminal oversight given that her point- the complete and utter barbarity of imperialism and the long-term consequences of imperial behavior- is just as important today as it was when written in 1988. To understand the violent rage that is piling up inside even the most peaceful Iraqi, to understand what can spur someone into the ultimate act of nihilism- suicide bombing, one needs to look no further than Kincaid's justifiable hate.

I think that just one short quote can better express the level of anger that I am trying to describe. Here's Kincaid talking about the collapse of the British Empire:

"...the English have become such a pitiful lot these days, with hardly any idea what to do with themselves now that they no longer have one quarter of the earth's human population bowing and scraping before them. They don't seem to know that this empire business was all wrong and they should, at least, be wearing sackcloth and ashes in token penance of the wrongs committed, the irrevocableness of their bad deeds, for no natural disaster imaginable can equal the harm they did. Actual death might have been better. And so all this fuss over empire- what went wrong here, what went wrong there- always makes me quite crazy, for I can say to them what went wrong: they should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so you can imagine the destruction of people that came from that. The English hate each other and they hate England, and the reason they are so miserable now is that they have no place else to go and nobody else to feel better than."

The book is about Antigua, but one could ctrl+F the text and replace every "Antigua" with any other US holding (Hawaii, the Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, etc.) and it would apply just as well. The cultural hegemony inflicted, even passively, by the haoles/gringos/yankees- the stripping of language, culture, history, of identity- is a universal activity and each instance can lead to explosions of rage which would then be used as an example to justify further repression. All of this is revealed in its most brutally ugly form in the incredibly short pages of this book. It wasn't what I expected when the K@ told me I should read it, but I am sure glad that I did. ...more

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Nov 28, 2017 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it

A powerful, albeit short essay by an author who generally tells it like it is, whether fictional or as in this case, not. As a visitor, you travel to a beautiful place. What do you see? Palm trees, blue oceans, friendly people, see the things, visit the sites that all visitors do. Do you, however look beneath the surface? In this essay, Ward takes us on a little journey, uncovering not only the history of this country, Antigua, but showing us the things that are hidden. Mainly how colonization h ...more

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May 02, 2019 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019, recs

At once acerbic and affecting, A Small Place sketches a nuanced portrait of the Antiguan author’s homeland. Subverting the conventions of the guidebook, the slim essay is ostensibly addressed to Western tourists seeking to learn more about Antigua. In precise prose, Kincaid eviscerates the island’s corrupt government, recounts a brutal history of British colonization, and lambasts Americans and Europeans who would make the land their playground. As sardonic as the author can be, she also pays ho ...more

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Nov 04, 2007 Dee rated it it was amazing

A poignant read for a book in concentrate (i.e. it's a short book, but it packs a brilliant punch). I used to own a copy until I was sitting in an airport one day and "befriended" a happy WASP family on their way home from a Carribean cruise. It was an enjoyable conversation until the mom started spewing some ignorant comments about the 'exotic' beauty of the places they had visited (including Antigua) and then decided I should have some Jesus pamphlet. I thought: if she thinks I'll benefit from ...more

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Dec 26, 2015 Ryan Jay rated it it was amazing

I want to give this as a wedding present to any couple planning a Caribbean honeymoon.

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Mar 22, 2015 Claire rated it really liked it

Shelves: antiguan-literature, nonfiction, autobiography, african-american-women-writers, around-the-world, caribbean-literature

Four short autobiographical essays, anti-travel, Jamaica Kincaid at her most provocative. The first essay is quite brilliant, especially as it is written in the second person, you, you, you, thus deliberately embedded with an accusatory tone.

Jamaica Kincaid has been away from Antigua for some years and is seeing it with new eyes when she returns, she describes the ugly, despicable tourist as someone we become when we leave home, how we are despised by locals everywhere. Her essay summed up in th Four short autobiographical essays, anti-travel, Jamaica Kincaid at her most provocative. The first essay is quite brilliant, especially as it is written in the second person, you, you, you, thus deliberately embedded with an accusatory tone.

Jamaica Kincaid has been away from Antigua for some years and is seeing it with new eyes when she returns, she describes the ugly, despicable tourist as someone we become when we leave home, how we are despised by locals everywhere. Her essay summed up in this quote:

"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 natives—most natives in the world—cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go—so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.”

She speaks of the old Antigua she remembers, named, built, run by the badly behaved English who imposed their ways and built things that would exclude locals or take from them, she removes all politeness and false exteriors and says the things that nobody ever says, let alone puts them into print.

The new Antigua, self-ruled, run by corrupt yet elected rulers, all of whom have had US green cards and most with Swiss bank accounts, each foreign investment has a suspect story attached to it.

"It is just a little island, the unreal way in which it is beautiful now, is the unreal way in which it was always beautiful. The unreal way in which it is beautiful now that they are a free people, is the unreal way in which it was beautiful when they were slaves."

Though short and something of a rant, I recognise the familiarity of Kincaid's rhythmic style of language, it pulses with energy and power and sometimes overflows, capturing that passionate anger for the state of her ancestral home. ...more

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Oct 12, 2018 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: caribbean-lit, best-of-2018, essays, audiobooks

A Small Place is Jamaica Kincaid's scathing and brilliant indictment of colonialism and neo-colonialism in the form of tourism in her home of Antigua.

I picked this one up because I wanted something thought-provoking and short and WOW. All written in second-person plural, Kincaid is speaking directly to you... to each of us.
80 pages later, and that was the razor-sharp, trenchant essay I didn't even know I needed.

Highly recommended. ...more

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Jul 18, 2020 Sleepless Dreamer rated it really liked it

Shelves: reading-a-book-from-every-country

A Small Place is several small essays written by Kincaid. From the first sentence, Kincaid had my full attention. Her writing style is powerful and angry but also poetic. She has such a literary voice and it's hard not to listen.

In essence, she describes the implications of the British colonization and slave trade. She goes into the depth of the damage, the loss of language and culture, of independence and freedom. Even after the British departed, Antigua was left with the remains of coloniali ...more

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Jan 17, 2019 Olivia-Savannah rated it really liked it

I will always be grateful to Stephanie from the blog @ Literary Flits for sending me her copy of this as it's a small book and she was done reading it!

It was a small book, but boy, Jamaica Kincaid was angry in this one. The good kind of angry. The James Baldwin writing Dark Days angry. She is simply fed up with the way her country is being treated, and rightfully so.

This charged essay is clearly and concisely presents its case and shows how terrible colonialism is, and how after all these year ...more

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May 19, 2017 Darkowaa rated it really liked it

!!! https://africanbookaddict.com/2017/08...

This is the 3rd Kincaid book I've read and she's always been a favorite. Where do I even begin with this one? ...It's brutal. Its brutal for the reader (especially if you are a reader who is white), for Antiguans, the Antiguan government and the tourism industry. Kincaid's 'A Small Place' is full of vitriol. She spews harsh criticisms on her native island's truly dishonest and disappointing leadership as an extension of colonialism. She also critiques ...more

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Jan 10, 2018 Lois rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: african-diaspora-interest, audio-book, books-i-read-in-2018, person-of-color-author, books-i-own-digital-copy, kindle-unlimited-or-scribd, black-books, poc-pov-char-or-peripheral-char

This is a blistering and wholly accurrate look at colonialism. I'm not surprised that some reviewers comment on her angry tone. Her anger is justified and validated in her writing. We are just accustomed to seeing colonialism as a benefit to the world rather than the horror it was.
Damn is this good. ...more

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Apr 18, 2014 Brown Girl Reading rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Lovers of Caribbean Literature

Caribbean literature is something that I haven’t read very much of, but the first two Jamaica Kincaid novels I read were Annie John and Lucy and that was a little over two years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed them. So to continue my discovery of Kincaid I picked up A Small Place and devoured it in a few hours.

The first few pages surprised me because Kincaid immediately implements the reader in the story. She is speaking directly to us. Many people will feel uncomfortable and resent her accusations, b ...more

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May 07, 2018 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: essays, tbr-shelf-2018, audiobook, 2018-favorites

[4.5 stars] A searing and brilliant indictment of all those who have exploited, from slavery to the present time, the citizens of Antigua. Kincaid writes with exquisite, measured fury. (I listened to the Hoopla audio with pitch-perfect narration by Robin Miles)

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Sep 11, 2013 Brittany rated it it was ok

Never in my life have I been so perturbed by something I read than by Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. I love and hate this book at the same time. This is the kind of book that makes me uncomfortable with myself, and forces me to think about my world in a way that I don't like to admit. Maybe that’s why I lean more towards not liking this book. Maybe there is some uncomfortable deficiency within myself that she brings to the surface like an angry boil. But I don’t think that is wholly the reason Never in my life have I been so perturbed by something I read than by Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. I love and hate this book at the same time. This is the kind of book that makes me uncomfortable with myself, and forces me to think about my world in a way that I don't like to admit. Maybe that’s why I lean more towards not liking this book. Maybe there is some uncomfortable deficiency within myself that she brings to the surface like an angry boil. But I don’t think that is wholly the reason. This book is beautiful, poetic, and deeply personal, but as an intellectual, I feel like it is also a work of flawed sensationalism.

Throughout the entire book, I could feel her anger. It pressed in upon me while I was reading, heavy on my chest. I think that the author’s rage is genuine, but after some reflection, I don’t like it as a literary device. Her anger and vitriol were very effective at pulling the reader in. However, it felt like listening to an angsty teenage rant. After a while, I felt as if she should calm down, apologize, and explain her point to me in a less childish way.

Furthermore, the anger and name-calling gave her work a lack of overall credibility. In particular, things like calling the English “bad-minded” were very annoying to me. You can’t just make value-based judgments about an entire group of people. Sure, colonialism and slavery were harmful. But it’s not like an entire race of people woke up one day and decided that today was the day to be evil and racist and enslave people. Things are much more complicated than that. I’m not defending slavery and racism as proper institutions. The American South is still reeling from the aftereffects of such human folly. It’s not so black and white. There are shades in between of not only people, but of the overall situation. And why should I have to feel white guilt because I am a white American tourist? Maybe it is possible to participate in tourism and still understand things about which she speaks. Maybe she should shift the blame just a bit.

Kincaid also spends a lot of time in her book talking about what has happened in her post-colonial world. She speaks of the corruption in her government. I read her rant about the awful, terrible people who have her country under complete control. And I read about how her people don’t really seem to care. Now the question is, Kincaid, What are you going to do about it? I suppose writing an angry, bile-filled rant will solve the problem? Maybe that will rebuild your precious library? No, it won’t. And the thing that makes me the most frustrated about her is that when I did some research on her I found out that she is now an American. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont, during the summers and teaches at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, during the academic year. Wait a minute, I thought Americans and America were bad? What is she doing about the problems in her beautiful homeland? Writing angry stories in a faraway place -- A not so small place. Frankly, I’m not impressed.
...more

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Sep 09, 2018 aPriL does feral sometimes rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: autobiography, essays, poverty-and-ignorance-suck, illuminating, non-fiction

Confession time, gentle reader. (Of course, I confess all of the time on this site, disguised as 'reviews' so, well, bite me). I know I am self-indulgent in book reviewing, as my reviews are often rants, screams and personal ravings about my life, triggered by some incident or theme in a book I finished reading.

*I enjoy screaming so much since I had a nervous breakdown (PTSD) a few years ago. It is my main reason for attending sports events. My friends think I am excited over a home run or a to ...more

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Jun 01, 2007 Annie Dean rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: tourists

If anyone feels like reading the thesis of my term paper... :)

In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid uses her complex insider-outsider status within each of the three countries she was shaped by in her life—Britain, America, and her native Antigua—to argue that the reason islanders must rely on white culture for survival is due to the continual degradation of the education system. Her comprehension of the complex issues within each of these societies allows her to prove to her primarily white audien If anyone feels like reading the thesis of my term paper... :)

In A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid uses her complex insider-outsider status within each of the three countries she was shaped by in her life—Britain, America, and her native Antigua—to argue that the reason islanders must rely on white culture for survival is due to the continual degradation of the education system. Her comprehension of the complex issues within each of these societies allows her to prove to her primarily white audience that, though native Antiguans have technically been granted “freedom” from English rule, over the course of time they have experienced an escalation of dependence on tourism for survival as education and literacy have decreased. This process, despite opinions to the contrary, continues to enforce the legacy of slavery that is an intrinsic part of the founding of the country. Though Antiguans celebrate their monumental Independence Day every year, there is an equally disturbing quality that hides beneath this holiday that Kincaid examines and exposes in this work. Her triangulated identity allows her to effectively explore the reasons for this state of educational decay, revealing the negative and positive effects of the British colonization and subsequent abandonment of Antigua, the rise of the American tourism industry and their lack of effectiveness in furthering education and literacy, and finally analyzing the Antiguan people themselves. Though they have little to work with in the way of natural resources, as human beings they have agency to make decisions, whether good or bad. Many embrace the white culture they rely on, even though they will never have full access to it or be viewed as equals by the conquering race. All of these variables render them more dependent on the European and Western world than ever before, and cut off almost all hope for educational improvements within the government, largely blocking any chance for the vast majority of islanders to escape this more evolved and unsettling form of slavery that exists today.

...more

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Jul 24, 2019 Monika rated it it was amazing

She is angry. She is grief-stricken. She is not at home with the things she lost. She is worried about what might happen if she doesn't speak about the wrongs of the present.

Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place reads like an angry rant of a native who has seen the changes and transformations of her small place and who isn't covert at all with her words. Her 'rants' are anything but incoherent. She, very candidly, brings out chunks from her present and shows how wrong, the natives, particularly the on ...more

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Feb 12, 2016 Richard Reeve rated it did not like it

Part 1 - Poorly written, second-person, sanctimonious, stream of consciousness invective, that appears to have been written by an inebriate.

Part 2 - An immature argument that attacks tourism and British colonialism whilst stating laughable generalizations and infusing these with specifics from her childhood memories of resenting having a wash before seeing a doctor. Ironically, she mentions that "people can recite the first Antiguan who..." but fails to do so. Paradoxically, she also states that Part 1 - Poorly written, second-person, sanctimonious, stream of consciousness invective, that appears to have been written by an inebriate.

Part 2 - An immature argument that attacks tourism and British colonialism whilst stating laughable generalizations and infusing these with specifics from her childhood memories of resenting having a wash before seeing a doctor. Ironically, she mentions that "people can recite the first Antiguan who..." but fails to do so. Paradoxically, she also states that the colonialist were "un-Christian-like" after first complaining about a "British God" in chapter one

Part 3 - Opens up with the statement that imprisoning, murder, tyranny and corruption are lessons learned from the colonialists. An interesting theory not borne out by human history anywhere in the world, as afar as I am aware. This hypocritical theme continues its whining diatribe decrying bureaucracy and capitalism but offers up no alternative; ironically called out from a person who thrives in the US privately-funded academic system, hardly a bastion of socialist freedom.

Part 4 - This commences rather schizophrenically. After bemoaning the fact that Britain provided a library which "erased (her people's) history in an earlier chapter, significant description is given to how wonderful the old library was and how it was able to "acquaint me with you in all your greatness" despite her regular thieving of its contents. Similarly, a complaint of "the bad post-colonial education" suggests that colonial education was, in fact by her own inference, "good." She also complains that the islanders "speak English as if it were their sixth language" whilst forgetting her rant about the colonial tongue in previous chapter.

Part 5 and beyond - Well into her stride with the disconnected angry ramblings, Kincaid now attacks the modern day Antiguans for being corrupt and small minded as well as the foreigners who have the temerity to live in Antigua. There are several anecdotes peppered into what passes as a "theme" of writing, although quite what this thread is other than poorly constructed vehemence, is beyond me.

In summary:

Jamaica Kincaid is an angry woman, with an unchanneled misanthropic perspective. It is astounding that such an unstructured, bombastic piece of ill-thought out, almost drunken, rambling would ever be published.

On the positive side, it is mercifully short... ...more

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Nov 11, 2017 Laurie rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017

Wow, this is extremely guilt-inducing to anyone who ever has or wants to go to a beautiful Caribbean island to "get away from it all." Kincaid powerfully points out that Antigua is beautiful but also beset with poverty and other problems that tourists will likely not see. This small nation has not been free from British rule for all that long, and its self-governance did not bring a better life for the average Antiguan.

These essays are scathing and incredibly thought-provoking about the past and ...more

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Aug 31, 2018 Karen Witzler rated it really liked it

Shelves: caribbean

As Salman Rushdie says in the introduction - a jeremiad- but a beautifully written jeremiad and contained in only 80 pages. I fear we are all becoming denizens of "A Small Place" not in a fixed geographical sense like Kincaid's Antigua, but economically and socially between the world of oligarchs, drug barons, tax dodgers, and those who are relegated to the College for Servants and who ought to feel grateful that they aren't outright slaves. I enjoyed the view of history, her personal memories o ...more

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Jun 11, 2019 Trishita (TrishReviews_ByTheBook) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed

Sometimes a rant, sometimes a lecture, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place pulses with the power of truth and teaching. I read this in one sitting, narrating it out loud to myself, reading a paragraph more than once. Because that’s the kind of a book this is, a sort of an exposé that tells it like it is, and I had to keep re-reading to understand the graveness of the cases presented to us in this little book.

Antigua is a nation as many others forever changed by British colonisation and, as we learn ...more

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Nov 28, 2010 Sandy rated it it was ok

Kincaid's tirade against the Western powers which colonized and exploited small, Caribbean territories such as her homeland of Antigua and the corrupt, patronizing leaders who have dominated the political scene since the island nation achieved independence. She spends a lot of time berating tourists for cluttering her beaches and degrading her island's culture without really understanding it. I know her intent was to make the (probably Western) reader feel uncomfortable and guilty for the sins o ...more

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Apr 30, 2009 Rosalie rated it really liked it

This rageful and funny indictment of tourism in formerly colonized countries is not as predictable as it seems at first. Who does Jamaica Kincaid disdain more thoroughly, the British who colonized Antigua, the corrupt elite who now rule, her fellow Antiguans who attend the Hotel Training School to learn "how to be a good nobody", or the hapless tourists who fly into this mess looking for a nice beach? It's hard to tell, and therein lies the interesting tension in this book, which she sums up wit ...more

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Mar 10, 2016 Hana Al-Harastani rated it it was amazing

Shelves: thesis-reading-list, nonfiction

Jamaica Kincaid's work may be a small book about a small place, but it is a very big book. Everyone should read it. Not only did it immerse me in Antigua in the eyes of an Antiguan, but it also made me stop and think of my privilege as a tourist, as well as privilege in general. At times, I felt like I was a part of the struggle, and at other times, I understood that it was not my place, that I was somehow in line with the Western society that caused the ruination depicted throughout. I felt unc ...more

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Nov 16, 2020 Chrissie rated it did not like it

Shelves: caribbean, great-britain, history, 2020-read, disliked, bio, audible-uk, returned, islands, politics

At the core of this essay lies a legitimate criticism of tourism, British colonialism and corruption. It balloons out to cover corruption in the past and in the present, in Antigua and in the United States, in Europe and in Africa. It sites case after case, piling each incident up one after the other, incidents occurring up to 1988 when the book was published. With so many sited, no one incident is covered in depth. No constructive solutions are proffered.

What is delivered is a diatribe. The mes ...more

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Jan 06, 2021 Barbara McEwen rated it it was amazing

Powerhouse! A sizzling hot little book addressing colonialism and capitalism. I have never been to Antigua but the guilt I feel when taking a tropical holiday is definitely not assuaged! No, I totally empathize with the authors sentiments and she voices them so well.

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Jun 14, 2017 Louise rated it liked it

Shelves: caribbean

It’s almost 30 years since this was written. I wonder how the author feels about it today. It created a storm in Antigua, as anyone who reads it could well imagine.

It starts with some creative, but not too damaging (to Antigua) thoughts on how tourists (should/do) block out unpleasant thoughts such as where the water they use comes from and where it goes; why the taxi is shiny and new, or how much the people who serve them make and where they live.

From there is moves to a rant, the essence of w ...more

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About Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid

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Jamaica Kincaid is a novelist, gardener, and former reporter for The New Yorker Magazine. She is a Professor of Literature at Claremont-McKenna College.

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The celebrated author discusses the intersection between autobiography and fiction in See Now Then, her new novel about marriage, love, and hate.

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Quotes from A Small Place

“You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day. From day to day, you are a nice person. From day to day, all the people who are supposed to love you on the whole do. From day to day, as you walk down a busy street in the large and modern and prosperous city in which you work and lie, dismayed and puzzled at how alone you can feel in this crowd, how awful it is to go unnoticed, how awful it is to go unloved, even as you are surrounded by more people than you could possibly get to know in a lifetime that lasted for millennia and then out of the corner of your eye you see someone looking at you and absolute pleasure is written all over the person's face, and then you realize that you are not as revolting a presence as you think you are. And so, ordinarily, you are a nice person, an attractive person, a person capable of drawing to yourself the affection of other people, a person at home in your own skin: a person at home in your own house, with its nice backyard, at home on your street, your church, in community activities, your job, at home with your family, your relatives, your friends - you are a whole person.” — 67 likes

“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 natives—most natives in the world—cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go—so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.” — 47 likes

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