A Small Place

by Jamaica Kincaid

In the year 2018, what is the difference between the American President and the Prime Minister of Antigua? The Prime Minister of Antigua is a very intelligent man, but that is as much of a problem for the citizens of Antigua as the ignorance and dishonesty of the President of the United States of America is for its citizens. I could not write about the rot in ‘A Small Place’ today because I live in ‘A Big Place’, where the rot makes my tongue, my fingers, my brain become still.

Not very long after The Earthquake Antigua got its independence from Britain, making Antigua a state in its own right, and Antiguans are so proud of this that each year, to mark the day, they go to church and thank God, a British God, for this.

But 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?