Kincaid's, "A Small Place"

1.)    Overall, is tourism good or bad?

2.)    How come when we become tourists “we become ugly?”

3.)    Does this make readers want to visit or avoid Antigua?

Overall, tourism is good for every country. Without tourists some cities or even larger areas wouldn’t flourish and this might even result in poverty.  “An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness (you do not look the way they look); the physical sight of you does not please them; you have bad manners 9it is their custom to eat their food with their hands; you try eating their way, you look silly; you try eating the way you always eat; you look silly) they do not like the way you speak…”

                I totally agree with this excerpt from Kincaid, although it may come off a bit harsh it is very true. Most of us live in South Orange County where we experience plenty of tourism during summer time and we can all relate how annoying it is to try and go to the beach and have all these people taking all the parking and spots on the beach that are not there the rest of the 9months out of the year. We mock the male Europeans that are there wearing speedos or tiny little shorts because this is what we’re not use to seeing or accustom to, but to them this is normal. We get angry when we see a car with an out of state license plate causing traffic because there are sight-seeing or aren’t sure where they are going. But, we do not realize that when we travel somewhere that we never been or aren’t use to that we become these people that we despise oh so much. Why is it that when you take someone out of their normal element that they become “an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing?” Does it make us stupid that we aren’t familiar with a certain surrounding or do we come off stupid to the locals that live there…?