The Small Place of Jamaica's Point of View

     Sometimes certain things from our past or particular events in our lives make us feel like we've hit rock bottom so hard, that it may feel like it's extremely hard to recover. This is what seems to be happening to Jamaica Kincaid in her essay, "A Small Place". It's interesting how everything that occurred in the history of Antigua has affected her so badly, that she's still extremely resentful after almost 500 years.
     As readers, we get the hint that she's not too fond of us from the very beginning. Of course, here she's generalizing and assuming that all of us are tourists in her land. On top of this, here goes another generalization: we're ethnocentric, self-absorbed pricks with a huge ego who live under the effects of eternally blissful ignorance. Of course, I'm paraphrasing here. My point is that Jamaica Kincaid doesn't only seem to dislike tourists, she's also convinced that she has us completely figured out. Both of these generalizations affect her point of view, limiting it and preventing her from seeing the full picture. Of course, the same could be argued backwards, as our lack of empathy or first-hand experience as an Antiguan may serve as a perspective limitation as well. But that's a whole different story.
     Getting back to the author's view, at one point she even says her and her people felt superior to the bad-mannered europeans who went to Antigua to live. As she does this, she may be even lying to herself in order to make up for the fact that she actually feels inferior to them and hiding her own insecurities. One could say this about many passages in her writings, but then again these thoughts could also be coming from the ethnocentric, self-absorbed prick with a huge ego inside of each of us.
     From Kincaid's perspective, we also get the sense that she strongly rejects everything british when it comes to defining her cultural identity, although she admits that the British have had a great cultural influence upon Antigua. However, she clearly does not identify with this herself, as certain things don't make sense to her anymore, such as praying to an English god on Antigua's independence day from England. Simultaneously, she also relates being ill-mannered to being "un-Christian-like", which may seem like a bit of a contradiction. In reality, it seems like Jamaica Kincaid's issues with her cultural identity began after she started questioning the origins of her customs, but she was already so used to these customs that it seems like they became a part of her that she's constantly battling against, trying to let go.