A Small Place

1. Are people in poor countries unhappy to their life?

2. What is the standard of satisfaction of people?

3. Is her opinion common to others who live in Antigua?

 

In Jamaica Kincaid’s book she narrates to readers as if they were tourists Antigua which is an island whose economy is dependant on tourism.  Her detailed and specific examples make readers imagine the places and atmosphere as she indicates.  She criticizes several things about Antigua in her book such as the money making scheme of the government, damaged libraries and so forth.

However I had some doubt while I was reading her book which was, “Do the current Antigua residents share the same sentiments as Kincaid?”  After all she is a person who immigrated to the United States from Antigua.  Therefore she is not a current resident of that island and has the luxury of knowing what it’s like to live in the US, a superpower country that’s vastly different from an island.  With that in mind she compares lifestyles of people between the ordinary Antiguans and those who can afford to travel to other countries.  She asserts that since they have difficulties in their daily lives that it must be due to their lifestyle in Antigua.  This, essentially, suggests that if they were to be living in the US that their lives would be better compared to the one afforded to them by Antigua.  However there is no definitive way to determine if poor people, such as the ones in Antigua, are truly happy or not based on the country or island that they are living in.  For all we know the poor people in Antigua are actually happy and grateful with what they have as they do not have the luxury of knowing what it’s like to live affluently in a country such as the US.  This is unfair on Kincaid’s part as she does have an unfair advantage of being able to experience both.

While some disadvantages of insufficient welfare might be true as Kincaid refers in her book, however, that’s still inherent in any country including the superpower that is the United States.  There are still poor people even in the US similar to Antigua so both are not vastly different from one another in that sense.  Even with that being said Kincaid expresses disdain towards the tourists, who feed the economy in Antigua, and how they visit based on the marketing of the island as a tropical destination.  Conversely speaking Kincaid also speaks negatively on the Antiguans for falsely portraying their own island as one without any problems when in reality they are from perfection with a poorly structured government as only one of major problems in regards to the island.

All in all Jamaica Kincaid has plenty to say but most of her thoughts and points are nothing but criticism that could be questioned by many people, in my opinion.  Due to personal biases such as living in both Antigua and the United States and then assuming the poor people in Antigua are unhappy simply based on the fact that they’re considered poor to Americans’ standards, I found it hard to take majority of her comments without a grain of salt.