Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place

The Caribbean plantation has been the original laboratory for modern-day capitalism, and the Caribbean continues to be that to the present day. Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, originally published in 1988, is a short, creative nonfiction book about Kincaid’s homeland, Antigua, before and after independence. The book received disparate reviews for its indignant depiction of colonialism’s presence in Antigua. Kincaid’s description of Antigua evokes a modern-day plantation economy: a few owners hoard the income-generating opportunities, some overseers get a slice of the spoils, and the Antiguan masses — workers, unpaid workers — scramble for crumbs. In this essay, I argue that Kincaid demonstrates a colonized mind, where her emphasis is on the owners and overseers and not on the Antiguan masses. She demonstrates this by making the book’s subject the island’s owners and overseers running amok, whereas the book’s objects are Antigua’s suffering masses, described with no agency. Expressed differently, the island’s owners are the actors on the stage, and the Antiguan masses are the play’s props. Kincaid, unfortunately, amplifies the Antiguan people as objects by omitting any mention of historical resistance against the oppressors. Lastly, she offers a solution to the oppressed that a colonizer would embrace.