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A Small Place: Antigua’s Deprecating Dependency Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place explores the blissful ignorance that tourists possess as they visit Antigua without knowing its history which earns them an unfavorable reputation among the locals. The ugliness of tourism within the novel is characterized by the quick turnaround of tourists that only explore a surface level understanding of the island before leaving. Through the narrator’s abrupt but subtle use of interjections, such as noting the tourists’ ugliness or ignorance in a conversational tone, and a figurative ‘tour’ through Antigua’s history, Kincaid dissects the tourist’s perspective of the island, allowing for them to shed their original viewpoint and perceive the island for what …show more content…
Here is where the narrator utilizes the key element of parenthesized interjections which display a different, more casual tone that allows the point to come across clearer and more blunt. Kincaid describes the locals laughing at the tourists and then interjects by stating that they are being made fun of because they do not go about traditional/cultural things native to Antigua in a normal looking manner. This is where the purest contrast between the two occurs, allowing us to examine the ‘ignorant versus resentful’ aspect of their relationship that displays the deterioration of the island’s unique cultural identity as it is dependent on the tourism industry. After this parenthesized explanation, the passage continues to simply say “I do not like you,” due to the tourists’ superficial lifestyle presenting a clear tension in the relationship between the two. We can utilize this passage as a lens for viewing the tense relationship between the two parties and how they interact with each other throughout the remainder of the …show more content…
The influx of tourism provides the money that Antigua desperately needs but not enough for it to survive independently. Antigua stays in a constant state of poverty due to the corruption present where a woman has power because of “her relationship with this high government official,” (Kincaid 12) and is able to amass property and a say in cabinet meetings along with the corruption where one of the richest people in Antigua is a “drug smuggler [who] is so rich people say he buys cars in tens…” (Kincaid 11). When the government of a poor, independent state is corrupt, there is little room for that state to flourish economically without an intervention of some other state. We can see that the last thing Antiguans want is more tourists due to the consumer lifestyle that they bring to the island, but it is the one factor that they need, dooming them to a cycle of barely surviving economically while ignorance plagues the land they call
“…staring at the sea, beer in hand…Free time is now the luxury, not sugar…or any of the goods that delighted the fickle tastes of Europeans…Such goods are now taken for granted – they came with a price, too, though that has long been forgotten (Gibson, 347).” In response, after reading a passage that states, “What is the earthly paradise for our visitors? Two weeks without rain and a mahogany tan…at sunset, local troubadours in straw hats and floral shirts beating ‘Yellow Bird’ and ‘Banana Boat Song’ to death…every island, is an effort of memory; every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog (Gibson, 348).” I am truly in agreeance with Gibson, visitors are devoid of Caribbean culture and history to this
As a long-term resident and self- proclaimed “avid tourist of the island”, Mooney has had the opportunity to observe the regional dialects first-hand. This exposure reinforces the credibility of her ethos.
“Jamaica’s a country of great dichotomy. On the one hand you have a tourist industry with great beaches and resorts, but on the other you have such great poverty and the violence that goes along with that.”(Michael Franti) In this paper, I will talk about the geography, the history of Jamaica, the people that live there now and that lived there in the past, the lifestyle of the society, and the society, like the government and economy.
Jamaica Kincaid in her essay “In History” describes how Antigua’s language, as part of cultural imperialism, was made inferior in favor of western languages. Columbus framed the unfamiliar environment of Antigua with things prominent in his thinking and his Spanish
Steven Gregory’s book entitled The Devil Behind The Mirror is an ethnographical study of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is in the Caribbean, it occupies the Western half of an island, while Haiti makes up the Eastern portion. Gregory attempts to study and analyze the political, social and cultural aspects of this nation by interviewing and observing both the tourists and locals of two towns Boca Chica and Andres. Gregory’s research centers on globalization and the transnational processes which affect the political and socio-economics of the Dominican Republic. He focuses on the social culture, gender roles, economy, individual and nation identity, also authority and power relations. Several of the major relevant issues facing Dominican society include racism, sexism, and discrimination, economy of resort tourism, sex tourism and the informal economy. The objective of Gregory’s ethnographic research is to decipher exclusionary practices incorporated by resort tourism, how it has affected locals by division of class, gender, and race, increasing poverty and reliance on an informal economy.
She repeats the phrase “Made in England” with a bitter tone to describe how it was written all over her childhood, how it “ran through every part of [her] life”, and how it represents the “greatness” of England ingrained into Antiguan society (40, 81-82). At the beginning of each paragraph, she includes slight variations of the ironic statement, “I saw England for the first time”, to duplicate the constant, powerful presence of England in her life, despite never seeing it in person, only seeing it on maps
...e" (Trask xix). This incident beautifully illustrates and signifies tourism's impact in American society. Like most Americans, this woman uses a discourse that has been shaped by tourist advertisements and souvenirs. The woman's statement implies that Trask resembles what the tourist industry projects, as if this image created Hawaiian culture. As Trask asserts, Hawaiian culture existed long before tourism and has been exploited by tourism in the form of advertisements and items such as postcards. Along with the violence, endangered environment, and poverty, this exploitation is what the tourist industry does not want to show. However, this is the Hawai'i Haunani-Kay Trask lives in everyday. "This is Hawai'i, once the most fragile and precious of sacred places, now transformed by the American behemoth into a dying land. Only a whispering spirit remains" (Trask 19).
Kincaid, Jamaica. The autobiography of my mother . New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. Print.
One of the ways the story shows how the conflict between locals and tourists is through first impressions and stereotypes. “It’s not her fault she’s haole” (21). “She’s not one of us” (22). People in Hawai`i is seen as either a local and/or a haole. From a number of locals, they say that if a person is not from Hawai`i, then she or he is considered haole. Kahakauwil...
Hawaii is a top vacation destination by many tourists all over the world. When Hawaii comes to mind many people and different cultures imagine sandy beaches, warm, blue waters, lush green backdrops, Hula dancers in grass skirts with flowers in their hair and leis around their necks. These visual representations are iconic symbols of Hawaii and of what many have come to define as Hawaiian. These images and ideas painted by the visitor industry most often take place at the expense of the Hawaiians historic culture. These stereotypes conjured up by the tourist indus...
In part fictional and part autobiographical novel “A Small Place” published in 1988, Jamaica Kincaid offers a commentary on how the tenets of white superiority and ignorance seem to emerge naturally from white tourists. She establishes this by using the nameless “you” depicted in the story to elucidate the thoughts they have when visiting such formerly colonized islands. This inner mentality of the white tourists reveals how tourism is still a form of oppression for the natives of such formerly colonized tourists as it continues to exploit them. I will be focusing primarily on page 10 of the text to illustrate this.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
...eople on the east side of the fence” or just plainly “oh you are one of them”, to Ocean Beach and its many shops and bar/restaurants which is widely known as the land of no which is ironic since it is the biggest party town on the island. The sad part of it is that a vast majority of the islands daily visitors or weekly/monthly renters have no idea of the islands history be it from the beginning or through the world wars. There are those of us that have been fortunate enough to have been raised either on the island, or within a boat ride from it. We are the ones who have been blessed with the knowledge of this wonderful place and lucky enough to have had it be a part of our lives.
2. Kincaid’s work is directed towards colonizers, specifically the English. She would like them to know the permanent marks England has left on her, because of colonization. Additionally, she aims to open their eyes to the difficulties of being colonized.
12 Nov. 2013. Brooks, Sheer. “’A Squatter in My Own Country!’ Spatial Manifestations of Social Exclusion in a Jamaican Tourist Resort Town.” New Perspectives in Caribbean. Tourism.