"A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

Hi world, what's up? So I got to read Jamaica Kincaid's 'A Small Place' for my literature class (hooray!). Hey don't laugh about my 'hooray' it's a sincere 'hooray' (one can have fun even doing class work right?). Anyway, I started reading it and started feeling bossed around in the most gentle way ever, Kincaid starts by telling you that you are a tourist arriving to Antigua, a place you don't belong. She goes by the whole traditional 'arriving at your destination' thing in where she tells you how to look at the island and what it means, it's a journey from the airport to the hotel where you are going to be staying. This is all quite normal actually, the part that really shocked me is when she describes how locals look at tourists, they make fun of them, imitate them and envy them. Let's be clear, this are very poor people who probably aren't getting out of the island in their lifetime. It's a sad reality, but when one is a tourist either in Antigua, Mexico or Dominican Republic it's a reality you or me as a tourist will not notice. If you put yourself in their shoes you should understand, these people work at the hotels where guests come and go, hotels in their homeland, hotels where they will never afford to stay. This is a product of the incorporated world we live in, for example, after the 2004 Sri Lanka the villages that were in the coast got whipped off the map, what did the government do? They used something Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman liked to call "The Shock Doctrine" and privatized the coastal terrains granting construction permits to big hotel corporations . The government drives the people off their god-given land (something like Iron Maiden's The Clansman Song) and builds infrastructure to capitalize on, the people have no option but to work here if they want to eat. The feeling that locals had in Kincaid's essay is the same feeling that people will have in Sri Lanka (that is parting of the Kavafis point of view that every city is the same, only the people change), they will look at tourists like outsiders who are enjoying what they cannot. Journeys? They really make one feel special and different, but not everything that shines is gold, no one knows how a place is more than those who live and work in it, as it is the case with Antigua.








Image from the remains of the 2004 Indian tsunami.










The Clansman is a song by the British Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden that shows the feeling of native people seeking freedom when being driven off their land.  Click to listen.

Remember, 
Protect and love your country, don't let it fall on the hand of capitalist investors who just look at it as a big bag of cash. 

May the force be with you,
Gabriel Rosa.

"Why don't you like me?"

So I got assigned chapter 8 "Helping" from the book "Down on the island" by Jim Cooper (yay!) (...) on my english class. This chapter is very interesting for me because good ol' Jimbo was in "shock" when he saw his college students cheating on the departamental tests, they were not only cheating, they were helping each other cheat in the exam. Yes my fellow boricuas, the gringo was shocked because we help our friends get through the hardships of life (even college ones). Off topic, if he was in shock on an english test he ought to hang around Ciencias Naturales when exams are given, cheating is taken to a whole new level there, trust me. On topic, Mr. Cooper points out something very interesting, that in the continental states students are encouraged to be the best in their own right, not to help their friends during exams and stuff because they are in a constant competition with themselves, their classmates, other schools, other states, other countries, hell, even with poor E.T.'s home planet.

To me this explains a lot about american culture, their desire to be the best and shine on their own right, after all they are a country "started" by revolution and what they have done and accomplished has been all them. In contrast, this also explains a lot about puerto rican culture, we want the best for our friends and family because we are a country built on suffering and slavery, we help the ones we care about, it's natural. He accentuated that relatives of the students he failed went to practically beg for some extra credit work, he said no. This drove me bananas, i mean, dude if they can't pass your class what makes you think they're going to pass that course with another professor or even graduate? Well the answer was simple, he gave the students the grade they earned, not the one they deserved. That is a very cool and awesome philosophy, but considering the state in which puerto rican education was at that time one simply cannot be a hard ass with students. I'm not saying he should pass all of them but he should at least try different methods of teaching before failing them.

He also said that students would often question him on grades when they got bad grades claiming he "did not like him/her". He didn't understand this, let me explain this to all of the non-boricuas, as we are very good with the ones we love, we are very very very (you get the picture) bad with the ones we hate, which might make us think that if you fail us it's because you don't like us. We are very hospitable people, i mean we take southern hospitality to a whole new level, he says it in his book, that if we invite you to a party we prefer a yes and a no-show rather than a no, it's just the way we are. We are also known to lie from time to time to cover ourselves or for a friend. "Why don't you like me?" represents who we are as a culture. We can go to great lengths for those who we love, helping them cheat, asking for extra credit for them, making their essays, you name it. I just want everybody to know that we don't do it for bad reasons, we do it with all the kindness in our heart, contrary to what news reports say, we puerto ricans are good people and we prove it to the ones we care about on any level necessary.


May the force be with you,
Gabriel Rosa