Life and Debt and A Small Place were both pretty interesting. They bring up very legitimate points that tourists do not usually know about the part of the country that is poverty stricken. I have never been to Jamaica, but I had heard that outside of the various resorts and vacation spots, that it is a very poor place.
During various points throughout the book, Jamaica Kincaid calls tourists "ugly human beings." She for all intents and purposes says that people who become tourists have pathetic lives. They need to go somewhere else to escape the monotony that is their lives. She goes on to call tourists "an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to to gaze at this and taste that." She says that it does not occur to tourists that the natives of the land cannot stand them. The natives mock them behind their backs because they look and speak differently. That all seems unnecessary. Why are tourists bad people? They have boring lives because they want to go on vacation? They deserve to be made fun of because they are not like you? I feel like it is not right to laugh at someone because they are not like you. That a problem that needs to be addressed.
Debt is such a massive and prevalent issue. We are surrounded by debt wherever we go, basically at all points in our lives. Our country has a gigantic national debt. When we graduate college we are saddled with the debt from our schooling. We have more debt put on us when we buy houses, apartments, cars, bills. I think it is almost impossible to avoid debt. You can have a very fulfilling and happy life with debt. It is very rare that you can avoid debt all together. You have to be born into money, or hit the lottery or something like that.
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