JAMAIKA KINCAID

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Inglese Letteratura
Download:	79
Data:	22.11.2005
Numero di pagine:	3
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

Jamaica Kincaid’s “A small place” is a travel book in which the West Indian Writer wants to define the situation of her native place, the Isle of Antigua, during her childhood (in British colonization time) but also in the period fallowing the end of domination.
In the extract she is addressing to an imaginary tourist, she wants to make sure the reader knows and understands her own personal opinions and identifies with her disgust. The writer wants to make the reader feel badly as a travel who can transform with money the natives’ banality and boredom into a source of pleasure.
Speaking about Antigua, Jamaica Kincaid writes “An Antigua, not as you would see know,” she wants to force the reader, who has no experience, to accept her “truth”.
Kincaid castigates the British colonialism because this was not only an economic expansion, but also an imposition of English lifestyle of political, social and legal system, of rules for daily life (think about the “bad words law” Kincaid names in the text). Kincaid underlines this law because it limited freedom of speak the original language as West Indians spontaneous did, this takes away a linguistic identity.
In Kincaid’s opinion Antiguans have a destiny as orphan people, without motherland, gods and above all without language, the most painful loss. It is absurd speak about crimes or dominators using their language, their speech can only tell good deeds and not violence. This is one of the greatest crimes colonization did.
British conquerors committed also an existential crime against Antiguans, after British colonization they can’t think or have an own view, they can’t have an objective consideration anymore, colonization has destroyed not only their lands but also their lives and souls, and the innovation in economy are useless for them, as the Gross National Product, which is only an arithmetic mean, a totally wrong criterion of judging.
In A Small Place Kincaid expresses her anger both at the colonists and at the Antiguans for failing to fully achieve their independence. She feels that Antiguans failed to adopt the positive aspects of colonialism, for instance a good educational system that might help the population to better their lives.
In A Small Place, Kincaid calls attention to the fact that in many ways, conditions in Antigua worsened with the achievement of independence. She communicates her frustration with her people and capitalism.
The British with their audacious superiority, overwhelmed already affirmed cultures only because these were oral and not written, but it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any, Antiguans had traditions, history, customs, language and believe that it wasn’t so, is a joke, a sort of justification for their brutal damages. Kincaid expresses its rage in an ironical tone, she calls British “not racist”, even if they imposed rules, lifestyle, culture where people weren’t able to stand.
Towards the end of the extract the addressee “you” becomes less generic, she wants to speak directly to the colonizer, to better underline his blame, to better condemn him for colonialism, boredom and hegemony over innocent Antiguans and also over herself.
She defines the English using bad and harsh adjectives: bad-minded, ill-mannered, miserable.
I the extract Kincaid names also the Barkleys Brother, against whim she is set, because they made money on slaves, selling them first and using their users then. Kincaid, instead, refused to work for banks because she didn’t want to forget the past.
(The native population was largely extirpated and replaced with black slaves. Therefore, the Indian culture was eliminated, the connection with original natives were lost. Even if slavery was outlawed in the late 1800, political and economic power rested in the end of white plantation owners)
The ruins of British colonization are in the main streets of Antigua, they all have a great influence of the Empire, named with the names of the principal English seamen, the houses all Colonial Government Business Institutions and are the most elegant ones; with trees that run along their sides they have a luxuriant aspect, specially East Street with the impressive and fairly Government House, where the Representative for Queen puts up.
Kincaid defines the maritime English heroes as criminal because they came to destroy her land and her population.
She concludes affirming that she would preferred to live like her ancestors, without rules and laws, as monkey on trees and not to be victim of colonization, which only caused discriminations and exploitations.
Kincaid discusses British colonialism, the corruption of the Antiguan government, racism, and greed. It seems to me that post colonial Antigua is worse than colonial Antigua.
Nothing can repress Kincaid’s rage, that became more and more aggressive till to denounce the situation after the independence (gained formally in 1967, and fully in 1981), when the imperial dominion was replaced by a political family only, that social and economic sectors controls, while tourism develops as an endless source of richness represents.