Themes and message

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the experience of a Western tourist visiting Antigua, contrasting the white tourist’s impressions of Antigua with the difficult reality for black Antiguan locals. The text is critical of the tourism industry and of the Antiguan government. 

Criticism of the tourism industry

The text shows how the tourism industry allows Westerners to visit Antigua without engaging with the island’s realities. Tourists are taken from the airport straight to their hotels, without thinking too much about what they see, even if it could affect them directly: “You pass the hospital, the Holberton Hospital, and how wrong you are not to think about this, for though you are a tourist on your holiday, what if your heart should miss a few beats?” (p. 182, ll. 30-33)

Kincaid presents Western tourists as ignorant and selfish: “by now you are tired of all this looking, and you want to reach your destination - y...