Key themes
- Tourism as colonialism's continuation under another name
- The relationship between the beautiful place and what it cost to look that way
- Language, anger and what a former colonial subject is allowed to say
About this book
A long, fierce essay addressed directly to the European tourist arriving in Antigua, Kincaid's essay is one of the most powerful pieces of postcolonial writing in English — about the relationship between tourism and colonialism, about the corruption that replaced British colonial rule, and about what it means to live in a place that others only visit.
Published in 1988, A Small Place was originally rejected by Kincaid's publisher (The New Yorker) as too angry. It is now one of the foundational texts of postcolonial literary studies.
Discussion questions
- Kincaid addresses her essay directly to 'you' — the European tourist. What does this second-person accusation achieve — and how does it feel to be placed in this position as a reader?
- The essay is very angry. How does Kincaid deploy this anger — as polemic, as argument, or as something more formally precise?
- Kincaid is also critical of the Antiguan government that replaced British colonial rule. How does she hold both critiques simultaneously — and does this double critique strengthen or complicate her argument?
- The essay uses beauty itself as evidence — the beaches, the colour of the water, the colonial buildings. What is she saying through this reversal of the tourist gaze?
- A Small Place is short and intense. What does the essay form allow Kincaid to do that a novel could not — and what does it withhold?
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