In Life and Debt, the narrator says the following quote from Jamaica Kincaid’s “A Small Place”, which documents the author’s experience growing up in the Carribean:
“Once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master’s yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.”
Comparing the way Kincaid grew up in a Carribean island to the way Jamaica was represented in the film is a complex issue. The obvious similarity is drawn with geographic proximity, but I feel that it where most of the simple comparisons stop.
I feel that the words have a lot of power, especially when noting that people are neither rubbish or noble, but simply human beings. The notion that anyone has viewed people as human garbage sickens me, and I feel that the same feelings are roused in Kincaid.
