Hey Bloggers! I managed to finish some of my work (YAY!) so I am a bit more relaxed. Anyway I just started reading "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid. I finished the first part of the book ( the book isn't really that long).
In this part of the book Kincaid focuses on the tourists that visit Antigua. She basically says (and emphasizes, A LOT) that tourists are disgusting, ugly people because they are unaware of the reality that surrounds them. They find everything amusing and don't try to look beyond it's amusing perplexity. One example of this, is when she mentions that the water appears to be beautiful but that tourists are unaware that Antigua has no proper sewage system so that the water may have the waste that they just produced. She talks about the emptiness tourists feel where they're originally from. Tourists feel unwanted and despised by locals, often saying "They don't like me!" and yet they continue.
When I read this chapter I immediately noticed the sarcasm in which Kincaid described the tourists and their experiences. I have to admit that her tone actually irritated me a bit, she looks at the tourists very despectively. The fact that she kept emphatising "YOU the tourist" and "YOU this" or "YOU that" made me feel like she was talking to me. I actually agree with most of the things she says, tourists rarely wonder how they receive most of the perks and services they get. A lot of them are through exploitation of locals or other forms of cheap labor. Natural resources in these small islands are very precious and tourism often exploits them which in turn harms the island as a whole.

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