A Small Place

Tourists become a figure in the text when Kincaid directly addresses them as “you” and describes the movements of vacationers on the island of Antigua, often with little consideration of the harsh realities of life in Antigua underlying its paradise exterior. The “you” she imagines are tourists from North America or Europe and “to be frank, white” (4), who are most likely to have enough wealth and freedom to visit the island on holiday to escape cold northern climates and what Kincaid imagines as the “ordinary” dullness of daily life. Kincaid believes that “from day to day, you are a nice person” (14), but as soon as “you” become a tourist, “you” turn into an ugly person who takes pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Kincaid blames tourists for upholding economic systems that continue to exploit Antiguans while also refusing to look directly at this truth.

By using direct address to describe tourists’ self-centeredness, Kincaid implicitly forces readers to consider themselves active participants in that intentional ignorance and to acknowledge the exploitative aspects of tourism. This technique urges readers to question whether they ever fit some of these negative descriptions while on vacation in impoverished countries. Kincaid frequently hurls accusations at the “you” figure, like “You will have to accept that this is mostly your fault” and “You came. You took things that were not yours, and you did not even, for appearances’ sake, ask first” (35). These accusations blend the tourist figure with the colonizer figure, which places readers directly within the history of colonialism from which many of them—and their home countries—continue to benefit. In the context of Kincaid’s argument that colonizers easily ignore the damage they did through empire building, this direct address to the reader leave no room for ignorance and force accountability.

Vere Cornwall (VC) Bird was the first Prime Minister of independent Antigua and held that office when Kincaid wrote this book. At the time, he’d served as Prime Minister for 25 of Antigua’s 30 years of self-governance. Kincaid describes him as “old and weak, and needs daily injections of powerful things to keep him going” (73), prompting Kincaid and her fellow Antiguans to question what would happen when he left his office. He had a history of embezzlement even before being voted into office, as he stole from his boss while working as a bookkeeper and burned the evidence of his scams. The Antiguan people had polarized feelings toward the man: Historically significant and worthy of celebration, he was also notorious for abusing his power and thinking “the government of Antigua is his own business” (72) and making Antiguan lives worse. An airport named after him, which Kincaid thinks is telling of where his loyalties were.

Bird’s two sons were also in government, in the second most important positions of Ministers of Treasury, of Tourism, and of Public Works. One son openly spent ill-gotten money on his “[opulent] and fun” (73) lifestyle, and the other was “ruthless” and “has been unable to account for large sums of money for public works projects” (73). Although Antigua has free elections, many at the time thought one of these two men were likely to replace their father as Prime Minister, either through rigged polls or by force (and in fact, one later did).

In Kincaid’s text, these three men function as figures of Antigua’s corrupt government, as they visibly abuse their powerful positions for their own gain, often at the expense of the citizens they’re meant to represent. Kincaid refers to these men to explore the difficult relationship Antiguans have with their government: They at once recognize that their officials are power-hungry thieves yet feel bound to support them because of their historical significance and fear of opposing them.