A Small Place Reaction

     The book “A small place” by Jamaica Kincaid demonstrates, through perspective of the author, how the small island of Antigua is perceived through the eyes of people from outside of Antigua, through her eyes when she was a child and through the eyes of the foreigners that invaded the island. The first chapter depicts Antigua as a very poor island with torn down towns where every taxi driver has new car even though they don’t have a house and that has a library hat has not been repaired since an Earthquake took place. The Antigua shown by the author through eyes of people that go on vacation is the island that gives the impression that simulates paradise and a personal space to but in reality it’s a troubled island that is made to look great in the most traveled streets and poor in the less traveled streets, revealing the stereotype of the tourist as an inconvinience. Most, to not say all, of the mansions in Antigua are owned by foreigners and white people who came to establish themselves in a place where they could do as they pleased because they had the strong connections with the government. As can be appreciated form the book the author certainly felt disgusted by the sight of immigrants taking over her island and her culture. Even though she expresses her dislike at the end of the first chapter she says: “the natives do not like the tourists and it’s hard to explain for every native of every place is a potential tourist and every tourist is  native of somewhere”.  The Antigua that she, the author, knew no longer exists according to her “bad minded people destroyed it and time deteriorated it” the bad minded people being the British when they took Antigua as a colony. She witnessed as one street became the focus of the island where a bank, a post office and government buildings where built and among this no black person could work in any of them if they were not servants. It is notable that the author had a dislike for the government and the invaders. After all these changes she started to feel as she was losing her identity and becoming British because Antiguans did not play a role in the development of the island anymore as she says : if you wanted to know me it would be through the eyes of England. What I think is that Jamaica Kincaid felt in a way trapped inside herself and on the island. Throughout the chapters there is a notable distinction that depending on what perspective she was talking about. Many different identities could be revealed from each view but curiously her identity  was the same. As someone who lives in a small island that has been conquered twice I have seen first-hand many of the identities she depicted. After reading this book I can be see that Puerto Rico and Antigua are not all that different.