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.
"I'll tell you what I do wonder at," said Bel Bree. "So many great,beautiful homes in this city, and so few people to live in them. Allthe rest crowded up, and crowded out. When I go round through HeroStreet, and Pilgrim Street, and past all the little crammy courtsand places, out into the big avenues where all the houses stand backfrom each other with such a grand politeness, I want to say, Move upa little, can't you? There's such small room for people in there,behind!"
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Kate removed the dishes, sent up the waiter, and producing some nicelittle stone-ware nappies hot from the hot closet, transferred thefood from the china to these, laying it neatly together, andreplaced them in the closet, to wait till Bel should come. The teaand coffee she poured into small white pitchers, also hot inreadiness, and set them on the range corner. Then she washed theporcelain and silver in fresh-drawn scalding water, wiped and setthem safely on the long, white sideboard. There they gleamed in thegas-light, and lent their beauty to the brightness of the room, justas much as they would have done in actual using.
Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand thatsmall human beings have a good many feelings and experiencesprecisely like those of large ones. She knew that if she woke upin the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again ifpulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very muchpatted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upperedge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, andby it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbsfell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do;little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant,as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again.She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least. 2ff7e9595c
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