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A Small Place

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A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Viewing the world as a tourist and saying you actually experienced the place you traveled to would be naive. Actually getting to know the place is a bit different. You see the poverty and corruption, the struggle and then the beauties and differences. But getting to that point is also quite difficult. Jamaica Kincaid writes about tourists and traveling, and takes us on a tour of an island called Antigua.
This is an excerpt taken from A Small Place. The author writes in second person addressing the tourist (who can be us the readers or any tourist around the globe). Kincaid writes in a tone where even I despised myself for traveling. She has the ironic and provocative voice that might offend the reader.
I myself have witnessed tourists at a young age and I did envy them. I thought I was going to get stuck in this polluted city my whole entire life. I saw them frolicking the beaches and drinking white wine while eating gyros as I sat behind my uncle's bar wanting to have fun too. But I have also been a tourist laying on a beautiful beach as a young man served me sushi and a pina colada. Jamaica writes “But some natives-most natives in the world-cannot go anywhere. They are too poor... They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go”(119 Kincaid). This quote made me think and realize that being a tourist is “ugly”. Natives see you in an envious way because you get to leave your unappealing life for a short vacation into their homes that they want to leave.

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