From the View of a Tourist

A Small Place begins with Kincaid's narration about the perception a tourist will have if it goes to Antigua. The first thing that impressed me was that for Kincaid a tourist is morally ugly. This is seen when she describes a tourist as "unattractive, fat, pastrylike-fleshed". Here she shows that physical ugliness is part of tourism  as well. In my opinion, for the author a tourist is ugly because she thinks that the tourists make use of others for their pleasure. In other words, that take advantage of people poorer than them. Kincaid also make reference that what seems something beautiful and new for someone, for others means a source of difficulty. An example shown in the book is the one about the sunny, clear sky of Antigua. This type of climate indicate that Antigua was lack of rainfall, so for the people that lives there means scarcity of water; but for the tourist it means beauty. 

In my opinion, I do not agree completely with the author since tourism helps the economy of the country; and not only help the country economically but also let others learn from your culture and history. Therefore you can not call ugly to someone that helps you in a certain way. In my opinion is an honor that other people learn about your country and culture because that is what define us as human beings.  

Finally, another thing that impressed me were the Japanese cars. The Japanese cars are an example of the kind of detail a tourist might observe without understanding its significance. The reality was that most of the cars were Japanese because the government make loans available for cars, but loans for houses were not easily available. That was the reason why the taxi drivers had such luxurious cars and the houses were beneath the status of the car.

In my opinion I agree with Kincaid because when we are tourist we do not see the reality of things and all seems beautiful. Therefore, the reality is that we do not know the significance of things since we are in a country that has a different culture.