Answer

Tourism and the Legacy of Colonization

Jamaica Kincaid in A Small Place is innovative in her handling of popular issues, taking the usual and giving them striking, new features.

The Unorthodox Portrayal of Tourism

• Tourism is a lucrative industry all over the world.
• Kincaid minimises the role of the tourists who go to Antigua, and in a wider sense, is critical of the tourism industry.
• While Kincaid admits that the tourists come to move away from their own boredom and the usual places they are used to, their movement is a problem to the locals who live there.
• This is reiterated by the blue skies that are clear over Antigua, a sign that there is less rain and thus inadequate fresh water. For the tourists though, the beauty is all that they care about.
• Kincaid’s description of the tourists on the beach leaves no doubt about his attitude towards them—they are fat and pastry-like on the beach.
• This, added to the fact that Kincaid feels there is a romanticization of poverty by the tourists, is a clear sign that to Kincaid, tourists are a cancer.

This portrayal of tourists raises an important question as far as the tourism industry is concerned: Is this industry that is often touted as an important way of cultural exchange a source of more problems than actual good? Kincaid agrees.

The Ambivalence of the Colonizer

• Kincaid identifies two factors that have shaped the psyche of the ordinary Antiguan: slavery and colonization.
• The writer questions the addiction to American pop culture by Antiguans, an important offshoot of the colonial experience.
• She is a product of colonial education
• She then assesses the state of education in Antigua currently, reaching the sad conclusion that back in the day, the education was better

This interpretation of the text raises the second troubling question: was life better in Antigua in the colonial context and does freedom then mean less for these once colonized people?

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