Identity Elements in "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

In the first chapter of Jamaica Kincaid’s, “A Small Place”, she writes about the possible thoughts a tourist would have of Antigua as they visit. Through all the descriptions, we can be a part of all the beautiful sites and wonders of the island, but also be withdrawn from the reality of the people who actually live there. Between all the descriptions, Kincaid writes information only a real Antiguan like her would know, such as why the expensive Japanese cars run so poorly or why the splendid library that existed still hasn’t been repaired after an earthquake ten years earlier. The descriptions continue at the hotel, and conclude with an explanation of her view of the moral ugliness of being a tourist.

She very well mocks the tourists describing them as “an ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing” and “it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you just paused cannot stand you, that behind closed doors they laugh at your strangeness”. The tourist are treated differently because the Antiguan community do not perceive the tourist as equals or part of their identity, as she says, they laugh at their “strangeness”. This is because “the perception of sameness logically implies the perception of difference, which in turn implies that those who are perceived as different are treated differently” as explained by Roberts. They are not part of the Antiguan culture, like for example the tourist don’t talk like them, and that's the reason they are being treated distinctively. Robert explains, “All speakers have an “accent” when judged from the standpoint of persons outside their community”. As an example, Kincaid says that the tourists are not liked by the people because of the way they speak (they have an “accent”). 

The second chapter, Kincaid writes some of her memories of the “old” Antigua, the colony of England. She writes about the casual racism of the times, and the differences in culture of Antigua from England. Though the English came to conquer, they would never convert the Antiguan people into their own. As Kincaid says: “But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English”. This is part of the “sameness” element in a culture and in an identity. The mixture of cultures has always a bad effect on the people trying to be changed, and this is what the author exposes on this chapter.