A Small Place in Around the World in 80 Books

Dec 11, 2008 Stephanie rated it really liked it

My friends in Fiji should read this. It is really a long essay about the history, people, and life of Antigua, a small Carribean island that was an English colony. It became a center for the slave trade and, although independent in name now, comtinues to be a place of political and economic corruption. Some painful insights into how islanders rightfully view foreigners and tourists remind me of how I sometimes felt Fijians viewed Europeans.Also the significance of Antigua being a small place wit ...more

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Apr 03, 2016 Karen rated it liked it

Shelves: travel-the-world

Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place packs a big punch of bitterness and hatred toward the English Slave traders and love for her 12 mile by 9 mile island.

It is an uncomfortable book, because everyone is responsible for the problems in Antigua. ...more

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Aug 05, 2024 Tony rated it did not like it

Shelves: nonfiction

I picked this up after reading the first five of Kincaid's works of fiction (which are extremely autobiographical), keen to see what her nonfiction voice is, and get a richer picture of her native Antigua. She left Antigua for New York at age 17 in 1966 and didn't return to visit the island until 1986. This lengthy essay was published as a book in 1988 and so seems to be a product of her reunion with the place of her childhood. As such, it reads as a very dated and muddled personal rant, and I k ...more

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May 23, 2016 Julie Griffin rated it really liked it

This is more of an essay than a book, really. Read this as part of Reading Around the World, for Antigua and Barbudo. So many books we have read have focused on the white people who move to an idealic place and enjoy the culture and people; this book is the harsh and jarring answer to that. Tourists are ugly, she says; they are ugly because all tourists are ugly to those who are in their humdrum lives in the midst of them, whether in the islands or in the U.S. We envy them. Kincaid has some angr ...more

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Feb 02, 2018 Nikki Morse rated it really liked it

Shelves: social-change, caribbean

Vacation book #5. Written in 1988, this is entirely applicable today - which made it an important, powerful, and uncomfortable book to read while being the thing she challenges - a western tourist in Antigua. The combination of the history of slavery and colonialism and the central reliance on tourism makes it challenging to be here - while it’s still the absolutely stunning place that it is, delightful for a beach vacation. So complicated...

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