Jamie DaSilva
Professor Nicholas Helms
Critical Theory
8 March, 2024
In Jamaica Kincaid’s essay “A Small Place” she discusses the effects of tourism on her home island, Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean. She describes these tourists as “ugly human beings”(Kinacaid, A Small Place, Literary Theory: An Anthology). Kincaid then goes on to discuss how people are not always ugly, they are only ugly when they are acting as tourists in a place they are staying for a short period of time. Kincaid discusses how tourists seemingly do any sort of research on the place they plan on visiting before they plan their vacation otherwise they would understand the realities of the locals in Antigua. She describes life in Antigua by using the state of the library and the standards of the hospital in Antigua as an example. When discussing the library Kincaid states, “Antigua used to have a splendid library but in The Earthquake (everyone talks about it that way – The Earthquake; we Antiguans, for I am one, have a great sense of things, and the more meaningful the thing, the more meaningless we make it) the library building was damaged”(Kincaid, A Small Place, Literary Theory: An Anthology). This library had been damaged for many years and may never get fixed according to Kincaid. This is the reality of the island tourists are visiting and are completely oblivious to until they arrive on the island. This oblivious nature seems to be what causes tourists to be such ugly individuals. This small island may seem magical to many tourists, but it is home to many people and these people are struggling to survive after fighting for their independence from England. When discussing the medical situation on the island Kincaid mentions, “that Anti-guans refer to them not as doctors but as “the three men” (there are three of them); that when the Minister of Health himself doesn’t feel well he takes the first plane to New York to see a real doctor”(Kincaid, A Small Place, Literary Theory: An Anthology). This further demonstrates the poor conditions the locals of Antigua must endure while the obvious tourists are staying on the island as a way to escape from their daily lives. While the island may look beautiful, there are many reasons why this is not your ideal tropical getaway destination.
According to writer Suzanne Gauch, Kincaid is shedding light on the realities of Antigua while simultaneously being a tourist in her homeland. Gauch discusses the tourism described in “A Small Place” by questioning the essay’s narrator when she states, “Yet in the end, A Small Place disappoints even such readers when it undermines the authority of its own narrator by suggesting that she is hardly representative of average Antiguans” (Gauch, A Small Place: Some Perspectives on the Ordinary). The idea that KIncaid does not fully represent her own home the way the reader would anticipate comes from the idea that Kincaid is also acting as a tourist in her homeland while simultaneously knowing the realities of what it is like to live on the island as a local. This duality in the narrator helps to strengthen the claims that Kincaid makes throughout her essay because she is able to view the island from the perspective of a tourist and a local, giving her more insight to the inner workings of her home. Gauch also argues in her essay that the goal of Kincaid’s piece is not to “point out the “real” Antigua as to highlight for the
tourist the tensions and insecurities lurking beneath her vision of an idyllic Antigua, those same insecurities and tensions that enforce the exoticization of Antigua” (Gauch, A Small Place: Some Perspectives on the Ordinary). This enhances the ideas discussed in Kincaid’s essay because it highlights how Kincaid is not necessarily upset with the tourists alone, but also the ways in which Antigua is not being taken care of by its government that is there to help support those who live on the island.
Similar to the tourism described in “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, the city of Somerville Massachusetts has its own tourist problem. Somerville was a decent sized city when I was younger with a diverse population and tons of activities to participate in. These activities include the yearly reading of the “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere ” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and swimming at the Foss Park Pool. The city was an interesting place to be, but there wasn’t much tourism until the Assembly Row Complex was built. I remember it being built like it was yesterday. Everyone was complaining that they were taking too long to build, and that it was going to cause too much traffic in the surrounding area, and they were right. The construction took around two years for the first phase of the project and the area is still being added to. The complex started with a handful of stores and a 200 room hotel, and has developed into a full shopping complex with a hotel and luxury apartments. These apartments are too expensive for those who live in the area to afford, causing more people to move into the already overpopulated city. Now, don’t get me wrong, the area is gorgeous, but too expensive for the average person to afford to shop or live there.
The people that stay in the hotel and shop in the area during their stay do in fact help the economy, but at what cost? They tend to be rude and disrespectful to the workers in the shops and those who live in the area. They seem to believe that they’re better than the locals making remarks such as, “why are you shopping here?”, “How can you even afford the things in these stores?”. As much as I wish these weren’t things that people visiting the city have actually said, it’s true. Now, not all tourists are like this, but the majority of them are, which makes it hard to want any tourism in the area at all. These tourists have caused so many problems, including an increase in rent in the surrounding area, simply due to the proximity to the shops. Everyone looking to move into the city seems to want to be near Assembly Row.
This rent increase had caused my family to be pushed out of the city. The house that my grandparents owned was not the fanciest or most expensive home you could own in the city of Somerville, but because it was right down the street from Assembly Row people wanted it so they could turn it into condos and rent it out to people who wanted to move into the city. The rent and price of the land slowly started to increase causing my family to be unable to afford the cost of the house. So, my grandparents had to sell the home in order to move somewhere more affordable causing my grandparents, my mom, me, my uncle, and cousin to all have to move as well. This displaced my entire family. Me and my mom were lucky enough to be able to move into my grandparents house when they found a new one, and my uncle was able to buy a home in a different town for him and cousin. It all worked out in the end, but having to start my 8th grade year at a brand new school made fitting in difficult for a while.
Similar to the tourists described in Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place” the tourists staying on Assembly Row do not realize the implications that areas such as these have on the surrounding city and the locals that reside there. While this tourism may have benefited the economy, it also displaced many families like my own that have had generations and generations living in that city. It also caused many locals to have a hard time finding jobs that could support their family while also affording to stay at their home. I have many friends that I grew up with that were also pushed out of the city due to rent costs increasing. They ended up moving to surrounding cities such as Arlington and Medford Massachusetts where they were able to afford to eat and have a roof over their heads. The locals of Somerville Massachusetts are still slowly being pushed out of the city due to new luxury apartment complexes such as the one at Assembly Row being built in the city leading to further overpopulation of the area and prices of groceries and rent making it increasingly harder for people to make ends meet in the city.
Bibliography
“Assembly Square.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Jan. 2024,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_Square#:~:text=The%20area%20is%20home%20to,and%20a%20200%2Droom%20hotel.
Gauch, Suzanne. “A Small Place: Some Perspectives on the Ordinary.” Callaloo, vol. 25, no. 3, 2002, pp. 910–19. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3300124
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell Pub., 2004.“Shopping, Dining, and More: Assembly Row: Somerville, MA.” Assembly Row, 12 Feb. 2024, assemblyrow.com/.
Sprockets and Springes 