“A jeremiad of great clarity and force that one might have called torrential were the language not so finely controlled.” Salman Rushdie, #1 New York Times bestselling author
From the award-winning author of Annie John comes a brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua.
“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.
“A jeremiad of great clarity and force that one might have called torrential were the language not so finely controlled.” Salman Rushdie, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Ms. Kincaid writes with…a poet’s understanding of how politics and history, private and public events, overlap and blur.” New York Times
“A rich and evocative prose that is also both urgent and poetic…Kincaid is a witness to what is happening in our West Indian back yards.” Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Wonderful reading…Tells more about the Caribbean in eighty pages than all the guidebooks.” Philadelphia Inquirer
“In truly lyrical language that makes you read aloud, [Kincaid] takes you from the dizzying blue of the Caribbean to the sewage of hotels and clubs where black Antiguans are only allowed to work…Truth, wisdom, insight, outrage, and cutting wit.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Language | English |
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Release Day | Oct 24, 2016 |
Release Date | October 25, 2016 |
Release Date Machine | 1477353600 |
Imprint | Blackstone Publishing |
Provider | Blackstone Publishing |
Categories | Biographies & Memoirs, History, Cultural & Regional, Women, Americas, Art & Literature, Nonfiction - Adult, Nonfiction - All |
Overview
From the award-winning author of Annie John comes a brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua.
“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.