A small place
Critical Book Review on “A Small Place”
A Small Place is written by a woman named Jamaica Kincaid. She’s considered by some as being the most important Westen Indian woman writer. In this book, Jamaica gives the reader a tourism journey into her native Antigua, to argue that the reason her people so heavily rely on western culture and economics influence in their everyday life is because of the colonial past Antigua has faced.
The first key theme I see in A Small Place is, Thief. Jamaica talks about how the Antiguans Ancestors weren’t as clever as their ancestors were (their being, the white tourist) in all of the horrific things the westerners did to slaves and how they manipulated them in to thinking their way is better than the people they enslaved. Jamaica also writes “They should never have left their home, there precious England, a place they loved so much, and a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they turned English.” (Kincaid 24) What I’m getting out of this is that the frustrations the Antiguans face whenever they think about the British and how they transformed them into who they’re not. By them forcing people to change them into Britons, they’re robbing people of their own identity. They took things that were not theirs and Jamaica also explains that “They don’t even ask, may I have this please.” To the British, it’s about expanding their empire all over the world, including Antigua by distorting and erasing a potential history the natives could be proud of and glorifying as well as expanding their own history. They create the laws and rules that favors them in a land that’s not even their own. To say that Jamaica is frustrated is an understatement when she wrote “Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.” (Kincaid 37) She’s so disappointed at who she
A Small Place is written by a woman named Jamaica Kincaid. She’s considered by some as being the most important Westen Indian woman writer. In this book, Jamaica gives the reader a tourism journey into her native Antigua, to argue that the reason her people so heavily rely on western culture and economics influence in their everyday life is because of the colonial past Antigua has faced.
The first key theme I see in A Small Place is, Thief. Jamaica talks about how the Antiguans Ancestors weren’t as clever as their ancestors were (their being, the white tourist) in all of the horrific things the westerners did to slaves and how they manipulated them in to thinking their way is better than the people they enslaved. Jamaica also writes “They should never have left their home, there precious England, a place they loved so much, and a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they turned English.” (Kincaid 24) What I’m getting out of this is that the frustrations the Antiguans face whenever they think about the British and how they transformed them into who they’re not. By them forcing people to change them into Britons, they’re robbing people of their own identity. They took things that were not theirs and Jamaica also explains that “They don’t even ask, may I have this please.” To the British, it’s about expanding their empire all over the world, including Antigua by distorting and erasing a potential history the natives could be proud of and glorifying as well as expanding their own history. They create the laws and rules that favors them in a land that’s not even their own. To say that Jamaica is frustrated is an understatement when she wrote “Even if I really came from people who were living like monkeys in trees, it was better to be that than what happened to me, what I became after I met you.” (Kincaid 37) She’s so disappointed at who she