A Small Place and the story that Kincaid reveals to us is set around the island of Antigua. To better understand the island and the way Kincaid represents it, we researched the history of Antigua when Kincaid resided there.

Kincaid lived in Antigua until she was sixteen years old before moving to New York City to become a writer. A Small Place is an effective work that shows her view of the island and how it was affected by European colonization and tourism today.

Columbus first settled on Antigua in 1493. In 1632, the English settled there and Antigua was colonized by the United Kingdom. An island mainly known for its sugar production, Antigua was controlled by the British for a long period, and for a short time was occupied by the French. African slaves helped in the upkeep of the island.

Antigua was eventually granted independence in 1981 after only having a semi-full government until then. Today, Antigua is associated with the Commonwealth of Nations as well as the United Nations. Known as the “gateway to the Caribbean,” Antigua is inhabited mostly by those of African lineage; descendants of those aforementioned slaves that were brought to help the sugar plantations flourish.

Kincaid lived in Antigua until she was sixteen years old before moving to New York City to become a writer. A Small Place is an effective work that shows her view of the island and how it was affected by European colonization and tourism today.

As we see in A Small Place, Kincaid has a long standing grudge against Europeans. Although, in the novel, she is more bitter towards Europeans than Americans, in her life, she has recently settled in Vermont. In an interview, Kincaid states that, “What I really feel about America is that it's given me a place to be myself - but myself as I was formed somewhere else." Kincaid relishes in the fact that she grew up in Antigua. That is her background and her roots. In A Small Place, she mentions the need for Americans to not necessarily be surrounded by the culture, but to see some of their own when they travel. For example, in the novel she talks about how Americans, when traveling to Antigua are have different expectations of culture and experiences during vacationing. She says that we expect to pay for things in the native currency and are somehow surprised when cab fares and dinners are charged in American currency. It’s just due to the fact that Americans and even Europeans, for that matter, are not necessarily open to the ideas of other cultures. She even states the irony of how Americans state how the love how the roads in Antigua are rough compared to the “splendid highways [you] are used to in North America.” Kincaid uses this idea of the close mindedness and only seeing what you want to see throughout her novel, A Small Place.

Class and race discussions occur a lot throughout A Small Place usually comparing the white European tourists who are wealthy and clueless of what life is really like on Antigua and the actual residents of Antigua who have no choice but to stay on their island that is slowly falling apart from a corrupt lazy government. Antigua itself was found by Christopher Columbus and colonized by English settlers. England kept a control in Antigua up until 1981. Kincaid compares the white tourists as pastry like fleshed people who have no idea what the real Antigua is like because they only see what they want to see while they’re on holiday. At no point does Kincaid talk negatively towards the black citizens that mostly populate Antigua. You can definitely tell by how Kincaid talks about these tourists and founding white colonists that she believes that all of Antigua’s problems stem from rich white colonists that didn’t belong there in the first place.

In A Small Place Kincaid, discusses the corruption caused by the white government citing examples of drug smuggling and the deaths of multiple government ministers. There is other examples of liberated countries that were once controlled by white governments that have failed such as Rwanda which use to be ruled by the Belgians until they gave up power in the 1960’s. Leaving a corrupt government that eventually led to the horrific Rwandan genocide that took place in the late eighties into the early nineties. When a high class government gives control over to a low class government problems are bound to occur due to the fact that when most countries give up power to another they usually don’t care about what will happen to the newly founded country.

Class and race definitely play a huge part in this novel as well as in Antigua. Kincaid typically describes the wealthy white royal family members of England as being unattractive and overall useless to the government of Antigua but yet at the same time they demand an enormous amount of attention while letting the country slip into disrepair. These enormous class differences are normally portrayed as being the cause of Antigua’s current condition. The fact that the white class is the higher class connects race and class together which is why Kincaid is constantly hounding the white tourists especially the European tourists for Antigua’s current condition.

In the works of Ms. Kincaid, the reader if often left with a strong understanding of where she stands when it comes to race and identity. In her books, Lucy, A small Place, and Annie John, she provides the reader with both the image of tragedy and beauty when she talks about her native land and history in comparison to how it relates to race. For her, race and identity have been taken away from her by the non natives. For a native like her, her identity isn’t associated with the typical individual from her memories of history.

After reading an article that she was interviewed in, she states “There are so many things that make up a person and one of them is not ‘an identity’…ones identity should proceed from and internal structure, from one’s own truth”. (191) however she defines race differently. She says “race is a false idea. It’s just an invention to enforce power. So I never talk about race. I talk about the inflammatory thing which is power”. In her adult life this is proven to be true by her marrying Allen Shaw (now divorced), a white man making her children bi-racial. In all of her books, it seems as if she wants to get across the message of what power does to the idea of race and identity. How power can change everything within a heartbeat, and how power has changed her life. A strong Caribbean Writer forced to the world of America because power took over her native land.

Work Cited
Allan, Vorda, ed. Face to Face: Interviews with Contemporary Novelists. Houston:
Rice UP, 1993.

Ferguson, Moira. Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1994.

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Penguin, 1988