The Library’s Sign
The sign on the old colonial library in Antigua’s capital reads, “THIS
BUILDING WAS DAMAGED IN THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1974. REPAIRS ARE PENDING.” As
Kincaid points out, both the sign and the damage to which it refers date
back to the colonial period in Antigua. When Kincaid wrote A Small
Place, the repairs had been “pending” for more than ten years.
Clearly, says Kincaid, people who can wait for something that has been
pending for so long must have an unusual sense of time. The library stands
on both a literal and a metaphorical fault line: just as the earthquake
shook the ground under the building, so did the shift from colonial- to
self-rule cause a seismic disruption in the culture that the building was
meant to serve. For Kincaid, the status of the library is emblematic of the
status of the island as a whole: damaged remnants of a colonial structure
remain, but the Antiguans are unable either to repair it or to move on to a
new structure. The sign on the library becomes a sign of the stasis in which
the Antiguans are trapped and of the inescapability of the colonial
past.
Japanese Cars
The Japanese cars, ubiquitous on the island, are an example of the
kind of detail a tourist might observe without truly understanding its
significance. A tourist might assume that the Antiguans simply prefer
Japanese cars, even though they seem oddly out of place amid the general
poverty. Kincaid says that only a local would see the significance: the car
dealerships are partly owned by government officials who have made sure that
low-cost car loans are available to everyone. In other words, the popularity
of Japanese cars on the island is part of a moneymaking scheme that has
nothing to do with either the common good or the preferences of individual
consumers. The unleaded gasoline required to run the cars properly is not
even available, though the drivers seem unaware of this. For Kincaid, the
Japanese cars throughout Antigua are a potent symbol both of the pervasive
corruption endemic in even the most mundane exchanges on the island, and of
the way in which the true significance of the details of daily life are
invisible to the tourist’s oblivious eye.
