This book resonated with me for many different reasons. The main thing I’ll talk about in this reflection response is Kincaid’s writing style. This element of the book creates an interesting journey of reflection for the reader to go through.
Throughout the entire book, she writes in a first person perspective, with a kind of wit and familiar tone that instantly creates a bond with the reader. In the first section, she addresses the reader directly, speaking to them with the assumption that they are a white European or European-American coming to Antigua for a vacation. In long, sarcastic, tangential phrases, she outlines the life of the typical white European or European-American tourist. On page 16 she writes, “But one day, when you are sitting somewhere, alone in that crowd, and that awful feeling of displacedness comes over you,… you make a leap from being that nice blob… to being a person marveling at the harmony (ordinarily, what you would say is the backwardness) and the union these other people (and they are other people) have with nature.” In this quote she makes many assumptions that then serve to be key points of discussion and perception surrounding Antigua.
The first is that places like Antigua, to white people, are places to go to escape their lives. That somehow, the flourishing nature, beautiful landscape, and native customs will give them a chance to forget about their normal, western, hectic lives (when in fact, if these western countries hadn’t destroyed their landscape and nature in the first place, they wouldn’t need to spend their time in a faraway country with people they usually avoid, those people being, of course, anyone who isn’t white, european, industrialized, or middle class).
The next assumption is that white people view native Antiguans (and citizens other non-white countries) as spiritual and harmonious with nature, but only when going there for rest, relaxation, and enjoyment. When seriously considering them as human beings and not as their own personal entertainment, white people call them backwards and primitive. Although these assumptions are not always true of white people now, they were almost ninety-nine percent true of white people in the past, especially during the 80s and 90s, when the book was written and when the tourism business began to boom. Even if these assumptions are not an accurate reflection of the reading, they can still illuminate the prevailing American and European ideas of countries like Antigua, and thus incite reflection on the self, and reflection on the society.
