A Small Place Summary

The author and narrative voice of A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid, asks readers to imagine themselves as a tourist landing in Antigua for vacation. The tourist takes a taxi to the hotel and passes by crumbling buildings, like the colonial library, which was destroyed in an earthquake over a decade ago. Having rhetorically delivered the tourist to their room, Kincaid ruminates on how tourists—people privileged enough to escape their mundane lives and temporarily enjoy another place without having to experience its troubles—become examples of human ugliness.

Transitioning into the first person, Kincaid describes growing up in Antigua while it was still a British colony. The streets were named after British naval officers, and British law governed daily life. Institutions like the Barclay’s Bank were created with wealth that its founders had generated long ago by exploiting enslaved people. And places like the exclusive Mill Reef Club resort functioned almost as colonies within the colony, allowing white North Americans and Europeans to enjoy the island while avoiding contact with native—that is to say, Black—Antiguans. Native Antiguans faced overt racism while being made to honor the legacies of their colonizers and former enslavers. If the descendants of formerly enslaved and colonized people seem to tolerate corruption and abuse, Kincaid claims, it’s because they learned from their oppressors to steal, cheat, and repress dissent.

This leads Kincaid to ask whether Antigua was better off under colonial rule than as an independent nation. She lists examples of corruption and disarray including the crumbling library, the poor quality of the education system, corruption among the government ministers, an outsized influence in government affairs by wealthy foreigners, and society-wide groveling to tourists. This is because in a small place like Antigua, people are prone to lose their perspective on history. Modern Antiguans talk about slavery as a dead institution yet subjugate themselves as workers in the tourism industry. And a history of oppression has rendered them passive in the face of governmental corruption. They may complain about the state of things but lack the will to demand change from corrupt, self-interested leaders like Vere Cornwall Bird.

Kincaid closes her essay on the “small place” of Antigua with an exploration of its almost impossible, jewel-like beauty. Its permanence and isolation have frozen it in place and imprisoned its inhabitants in a stasis from which they struggle to emerge.