Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Sticker on spine, creasing to front cover. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 96 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"A Small Place is an extended essay by Kincaid on her native Antigua, one which manages to be at once both scathing and insightful. Despite its brevity, Kincaid manages to take on such issues as Antigua's colonial past; the impact of tourism by mostly white, wealthy tourists on its present; and the dependence wrought by big business and global corruption with insight and clarity. Given that I am myself white and western, this was not an easy read-Kincaid is acerbic and angry, and I think justifiably so-but I think very much a worthwhile one. She doesn't offer solutions, but I think A Small Place is worth reading just in order to make one realise that there are questions which need answering."
"Her anger spoke to me and articulated so many of my complicated feelings about my time abroad in a way that I never could because my anger, as an outsider observing the phenomenon of tourism as pseudo-tourist myself, is only a fraction of what she surely feels. That being said, I noticed in our classroom discussion that this anger had the effect of inspiring defensiveness in her audience and might have achieved more productive ends had some of it been toned down? I'm not sure, really, because there is a very fine line to walk between expressing an idea passionately and alienating an audience. On a personal level, I feel she hit the mark. I'm not certain whether that rings true for everyone."
"Non-fiction that I'm totally digging! The book starts off and you're thinking, "Ok, this isn't anything I don't know or don't feel guilty about all ready." It's not an annoyance, but it's not very compelling to read the white guilt you're probably already feeling having just like been to the groccery store or something banal and horrible like that. But the content (best word I can think of) becomes so brutal, and you realize Jamaica Kincaid is talking about Antigua--not Cuba or Jamaica or anything. But you still know the horrifying effects of imperialism--that started our country. That started even cool ass Canada! It's the book's pacing that gives it most of its force. Very detailed descriptions of your trek to the hotel, and then very broad explanations of history. It's truly amazing and absolutely enraging. This is the same author who wrote Lucy. Reading both of these books one after the other--they're a strange pair. I'm going to be writing a paper on it sometime this week. And I'm really interested in pursuing the thesis as my final research paper for the class. Fantastic one-sit read. Highly recommended from an unlikely recommender"
"When my two daughters were 13e and 15 we took them to Antigua, in the Caribbean, for a one-week getaway in the middle of winter. We lived in Maine at the time, where the winters were long. We wanted to teach them to travel and to give them the world (not a humble amibition). They had been to Disneyworld a couple years prior. This time, I searched for a book about our dsesstination and this one popped up.
It was the best thing we did to prepare. The book is wonderfully lyrical with a unique voice; extolling the virtues of Antigua yet at the same time, laying out the issues of colonialsim from the viewpoint of the locals.
Our trip was ever so much richer than it would have been otherwise, and the book had a lasting effect on my daughters ability to see and to define the world."
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