Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place

I must admit I went a bit back and forth with regards to Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. No doubt, Kincaid’s streaming, uninterrupted, sentences are evocative and carefully crafted; one is surprised to envision captivating images of an island through her narrative that is descriptively bare and rid of much graphic detail. In a phrase, the writing style is wonderfully unpretentious, and thought-provoking; it carries the depth of thought and the persuasion of speech at the same time. However – and although I might be treading on dangerous ground here – I will mention my reservations with the book.

At its best, A Small Place contains passages that are as witty as they are innovative: such as “in places where there is a Minister of Culture it means there is no culture” (p. 49), or, “[discussing the first English industrialists] there was nothing noble-minded men could not do when they discovered they could slap time on their wrists” (p. 10). At other times, the wit has a rancid aftertaste: “that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing … pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you” (p. 17); and then again, there are sections that are down-right belligerent: “You see an incredibly unattractive, fat, pastrylike-fleshed woman … with a man, an incredibly unattractive, fat, pastrylike-fleshed man” (p. 13).

As isolated descriptions, these are all interesting, but my sense is that the latter, the hostile, take preeminence in Small Place, to the effect that the sections of the greatest poetic merit get hidden behind the vindictive speech, attacking the English, Americans, everyone who’s white. I think this does injustice to the most beautiful and insightful passages of hers, such as the one where she laments the fact that her language is that of the imperialists: “isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is that language of the criminal who committed the crime?” (p. 31). Instead, we must read a lot about the “human rubbish from Europe” (e.g., p. 80). We are left with the impression that, if you happened to be white, you are ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. If you behave as an ignorant sun-hungry tourist, you are a disgrace; if you try to learn something about local customs and foods, you look repugnantly silly. I am sure there is something to this, but is this really all?

I also find it troublesome when Kincaid pretends to ‘know’ how it is like to be from another culture. Sure, most of us who read A Small Place are embarrassingly ignorant about Antigua and its people, and Kincaid’s testimony might be the closest we get to any substantial idea of life on this island. But why doesn’t she limit herself to descriptions of this life and its emotions? How does she know that “The English hate each other and they hate England” (p. 24)? The Western academe still tries to clean up the dross of abusive anthropology, imperialist notion, and so forth, of past approaches to other cultures. I think Kincaid is committing some of the same errors as our intellectual forerunners in the way she puts thoughts in other peoples’ minds.

-- Alexander