Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place: Discussion Questions
Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place is a book that helps us understand the frustration and dilemma of being a member of a society that has been colonized even after colonization has officially ended. As we will see this semester, her frustration is not the only way to respond to such a state of affairs, but it does raise for us issues such as the following:
- What has been lost due to colonization in the way of past culture, its ways, identity, and language?
- Does the current cultural expression of formerly colonized people represent a victimized, oppressed, even inauthentic state?
- What happens when a small place with small events cannot give an account of itself?
- Can tourism really be understood to be a beneficial, or even benign, market for the Caribbean?
- What are the origins and impact of present government corruption and poverty on the Caribbean?
- What makes the personality and consciousness of Caribbean peoples different from Western individualism?
Discussion Questions
- How does Kincaid describe the typical tourist? Is she being fair?
- Why does the native person hate the tourist?
- How does she describe the current (c.1988) economic state of Antigua?
- Why is she so angry at the British? Why can't she forgive and forget?
- Whom is she addressing ("you") on pages 34-37?
- Why is the loss of the library important to her? What does it represent?
- According to Kincaid, why can't a small place with small events give an account of itself?
- What is the relationship between slavery, past British colonialism, and present government corruption?
- Why is the beauty of Antigua "too beautiful"? (77)
- Does Kincaid's tone shift in A Small Place in important ways? Why or why not?
- Why does she conclude her essay the way she does? What does she finally conclude about human beings?
- What does Kincaid want her (western) reader to ultimately understand?