“If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see… “ (Kincaid, 1). The lyrical first chapter of A Small Place paints a picture of the natural beauty, the crumbling school, the shiny Japanese car dealership, the damaged library, the hurting people, the remnants of colonial signage, and the exploitation of a 12 mile island. "And so you needn’t let that slightly funny feeling you have from time to time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledged unease, discomfort; you could ruin your holiday” (Kincaid, 10).
Crystal blue water and soft pink sand bring tourist from North America (or worse- Europe) to Antigua year round and there is a very tense relationship between the island and the visitors. “A tourist is an ugly human being. 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… An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you” (Kincaid,14,17). Yet the country broadcast graduation from The Hotel Training School on television and over the radio as a national celebration. “In Antigua, people cannot see a relationship between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and their celebration of The Hotel Training School” (Kincaid, 55). The school teaches them how to be invisible, how to serve. Slavery by another name. The corrupt men who run their country have essentially given it away to corrupt foreigners on many levels. There is corruption in the hotel and gambling industry. There are drugs and prostitution and car dealerships- a myriad of unethical relationships that benefit everyone with the job title “Minister” of something.
Kincaid goes beyond how the island operates now and dives into thewhy. The remnants of colonialism and British rule and the one time the Queen visited are everywhere. “So everywhere they went turned into England; and everybody they met 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 and land that came from that” (Kincaid, 24). The English came, they conquered, they built, and then they left in 1981. “Have you ever wondered to yourself why it is that all people like me seem to have learned from you is how to imprision and murder each other, how to govern badly, and how to take the wealth of our country and place it in Swiss bank accounts? How to corrupt our societies and be tyrants?” (Kincaid, 34). Kincaid goes on to discuss if Antigua is better off as a self-ruled island or when it had been dominated by the English? The shame and bitterness she expresses as she explores the answer is heartbreaking. She uses the islands library as an example of what happened when the English left. There is still a sign that hangs on the door- This building was damaged in the earthquake of 1974. Repairs are pending. Still pending. It was a beautiful yellow building with a large veranda and was important to the English because it reminded them of home, but now it’s not important to the government to fix or repair or renovate.
At times, I felt uncomfortable reading this book. My family owns a home in the US Virgin Islands, on a hotel property in St.Thomas where I’ve visited countless times in the last dozen years. After about 3 pages, I didn’t want to read this book. I didn’t want it to be relevant to me- the role that tourist play in the continued oppression of people in small places. Tiny islands bought, or taken, by larger nations. I didn’t want to feel the discomfort that Kincaid writes about in the first part of the book- the full-fledged unease. When she wrote about the Barclay Brothers who were prominent slave-traders who then went into banking and became even richer I put the book down. Barclays bank is the bank Apple works with to provide of all the financing in store for our customers. This connection - more than a century later- does it matter? I suddenly think so. In this course I’m becoming more aware than ever before how my life is influenced in ways I’ve chosen to be ignorant about. It is just a little island. It has been a big lesson.
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