“You Are An Ugly Human Being” in Commercialized Paradise in Jamaica Kincaid"s A Small Place

“You Are An Ugly Human Being” in Commercialized Paradise in Jamaica Kincaid"s A Small Place

  This essay explores Jamaica Kincaid"s A Small Place(1988) in terms of tourism and globalization in relation to the culturally and politically paralysed postcolonial conditions of the Caribbean. As one of several major economic sources, Caribbean tourism is thought to enhance the economy and improve upon the devastated living conditions of the black majority in the rapidly globalizing world. However, throughout this eighty-one page long text, Kincaid harshly criticizes the white tourist"s liberal guilt and indifference as well as negative impacts of tourism on the socio-political system of the Caribbean. In addition, Kincaid - vividly illustrates ubiquitous -racism and corruption in her postcolonial home island, Antigua. With a guiding voice and vision, Kincaid manipulates the cross-cultural reader/tourist"s ignorance to recount what is already narrated in History with deeply wounded traces. After all, Kincaid"s text articulates the inevitable need for both the white tourist and the black native to overthrow the historically inscribed positions as oppressor (master) or victim (slave) to become human beings - no more or less than just human beings.