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Small Place [Paperback]

Jamaica Kincaid (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 14.50
Price: CDN$ 10.83 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 25. Details
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Book Description

Publication Date: April 1 2000
A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ."

So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up.

Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.

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Product Description

From Library Journal

Kincaid here examines the geography and history of Antigua, where she was raised. We first see the island through the eyes of the typical North American tourist, who aims to exchange his or her own "everydayness" for that of someone without the same privilege. But rather than interpret Antiguan experience for outsiders, Kincaid lays bare the limits of her own understanding. She asks us to grasp the crime of empire in a new way, stressing that it can be understood only from a post-colonial point of view: surveying 20 years of a corrupt "free" government, she finds the inheritance of colonialism to be a commercial and governmental enterprise that serves individual interests. Antiguans, she effectively demonstrates, are ordinary people saddled with an unthinkable but unbreachable past. Mollie Brodsky, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Ms. Kincaid writes with passion and conviction . . . [with] a poet's understanding of how politics and history, private and public events, overlap and blur."-- The New York Times

"A jeremiad of great clarity and force that one might have called torrential were the language not so finely controlled."--Salman Rushdie

"A rich and evocative prose that is also both urgent and poetic . . . Kincaid is a witness to what is happening in our West Indian back yards. And I trust her."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Kincaid continues to write with a unique, compelling voice that cannot be found anywhere else. Her small books are worth a pile of thicker--and hollower--ones."-- San Francisco Chronicle

"This is truth, beautifully and powerfully stated . . . In truly lyrical language that makes you read aloud, [Kincaid] takes you from the dizzying blue of the Caribbean to the sewage of hotels and clubs where black Antiguans are only allowed to work . . . Truth, wisdom, insight, outrage, and cutting wit."--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Wonderful reading . . . Tells more about the Caribbean in 80 pages than all the guidebooks."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
IF YOU GO to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars awesome Feb 6 2012
By sunny
Format:Paperback
an awesome and very clean book! thanks. The item was very well kept as the sender had described even better than I expected. I am really happy with my product.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful story Feb 23 2005
By Michael Brown
Format:Paperback
Small Place is a very simple-written book. With a fascinating setting in Antigua is the story of the extraordinary conditions of the life of the people of Antigua. Jamaica Kincaid's writing portrays not only her bitterness with the legacies of slavery but also her disappointment with the new Antigua, especially the loss of social values and the corruption plaguing the political life and those higher up in society. And she brought it out so succinctly and poignantly that this book clearly articulates the crisis plaguing developing nations, especially Africa that though independent, still have not yet shaken off the negative legacies of colonialism. This is a highly recommendable read.
Also recommended: THE USURPER AND OTHERS, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE
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5.0 out of 5 stars Spell-binding Jun 12 2004
By Beckett
Format:Paperback
Exceptional, breathtaking. I have never in my entire life witnessed a god-given writing talent like this.
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Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Til You Have lived it , judge not, what you do not know
I have read the reviews and I must say that I think that are those who either speak with a guilty conscience, are in denial or just plain ignorant to the realities of life in the... Read more
Published on Jun 12 2004 by Meaghan Vallee
2.0 out of 5 stars Be Part of the Solution
This book is full of hate and racism on Kincaid's part. Would she have no tourists? What brings in the money? She should be a part of the solution not continue the problem.
Published on Sep 24 2003
4.0 out of 5 stars A Caribbean jeremiad
"A Small Place," by Jamaica Kincaid, is a nonfiction prose piece about the Caribbean island of Antigua. Read more
Published on April 9 2003 by Michael J. Mazza
3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating use of tense and voice
Like other reviewer, I was little put off by Kincaid's politics.

But the first thing that struck me about this book was the tense and voice. Second person (? Read more

Published on Feb 16 2003 by John Hartnett
1.0 out of 5 stars The selling out of the West Indies
Unfortunately, I had to buy A Small Place for my University of Michigan class on Latin America. I'm horrified that students and people will believe the West Indies is such a bad... Read more
Published on Jan 21 2003 by J. Sears
1.0 out of 5 stars And we hate you, too
I am a pacifist, liberal, anti-racist, but lord help me if I wasn't a panting colonialist by the time I finished this rant. Hate breeds hate, right? Read more
Published on Dec 18 2002
4.0 out of 5 stars Kincaid tells the Antigua's world with passion and truth
Kincaid's Small Place was an eye-opening journey to a small tropical island known as Antigua. The first part of the journey is told to you using "you" as a tourist to Antigua and... Read more
Published on Oct 16 2002 by Avery
5.0 out of 5 stars A Small Place
The book is very simple to read and equally perceptive of the conditions that afflict the people of Antigua. Read more
Published on Sep 18 2002 by Maureen Mungai
4.0 out of 5 stars An enlightening essay
Jamaica Kincaid writes an essay examining racial relations in her native island Antigua. She is very bitter about how blacks are treated in the Caribbean and rightfully so. Read more
Published on Nov 13 2001 by Algernon Cargill
4.0 out of 5 stars A Small Place Indeed
A remarkable story of a citizen who left and came back. We, the readers experience Antigua through the eyes of native. Read more
Published on Sep 25 2001 by J. Craighead
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