Patience is a Virtue

1.      Is Kincaid being mildly bigoted towards the British in “A Small Place?”

2.      What do you think of tourism in the Orange County and Los Angeles area? Is it helpful or hurtful to you as a resident?

3.      Does reading “A Small Place” make you want to visit Antigua or avoid it?

I would like to focus on the passage in Kincaid’s, “A Small Place,” that inspired question number two. In this vivid and elaborate piece of writing, Kincaid says; “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 that, and it will never occur to you that the 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).” She goes on ranting a little more, but later defends these annoying visitors when she says, “For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere.” I found this type of negotiating technique rather enjoyable because this is exactly how I feel about the constant tourists that I get to encounter daily. This feeling of "do I loathe or love 'em" is what I'd like to elaborate on.

I live in the beautiful and quaint city of San Clemente. It is almost always quiet and not overly crowded until the spring and summer. Then it’s like a bomb went off that spewed thousands of tourists about, over-running the once seemingly quiet streets. I understand that this is a needed revenue boost for the city, but it always makes me want to pull my hair out! They take over the beaches (the one’s I like to surf at). They drive around like they have no real destination in sight and cause massive traffic jams. However, as annoying as these out-of-towners seem we need to (myself included), understand that just as Kincaid said in so many words; we have or will become, a tourist at some point in our lives.

I thoroughly enjoyed this reading by Jamaica Kincaid. It made me stop and think about how to prepare for my frustration level with the looming spring/summer season. I have to remember how stupid and annoying I must have been when I visited all those other countries. It helped me to realize that I need to be a little more patient with tourists and to see the positive side of their invasion.