| This reaction of mine will no doubt be the only minority report.
Unlike my class fellows, I find nothing up-lifting nor inspiring in her attempts to make
the reader (myself) feel the guilt that she evidently believes all White Western English
readers should feel. She thinks, and wants us to think, in broad categories.
Slave eqauls noble. Master equals monster. She good, we bad.
The over-riding impression is of a writer motivated by her sense of revenge. She wants revenge for all the wrong doings of the past. And she is seeking literary recognition for this highly political position. She may/may not be certain of her artistic merits, but she is samelessly certain of her moral superiority over her readers.
A Small Place is well named. Antigua is a very small island in the middle of a wide sea. Its jewel-like beauty is difficult for the tourist to overlook. Its a place that if one is born to it, escape is the only thought. Small islands breed claustrophobic and myopic locals. And the island powers (who are usually not on the island)are always sitting in the locals head, breeding contempt and hatred.
"Many American readers want to be entertained. Perhaps they want happy endings in literature to erase the unhappy endings they actually caused for so many people." quotes Steve Horowitzs of Jamaica Kincaid.
This fiction is no fiction, but rather a portraite of Ms. Kincaid's daily thinking. She is well reviewed in the United States, homeland of the Beast. And many academics will find in her just the political(=activist) writer that satisfies. |