Jamaica Kincaid’s "The Ugly Tourist" Essay

                       

           

            Jamaica Kincaid’s "The Ugly Tourist" originally appeared in the magazine Harper’s in 1988.  In this essay Kincaid successfully conveys her opinions on tourists and how ugly she thinks they can be and are.  She, Kincaid, starts her essay off with a very frank statement “The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true:  A tourist is an ugly human being.”  With this statement I believe Kincaid is trying to insult the reader along with shocking them, which is an attention getter.  Now that Kincaid has your attention she tells her audience, which are tourists, exactly what she thinks of their antics and why they are not appreciated.  Kincaid is obviously from a place that is frequented by tourists and has many opinions on the subject.  One of many good points Kincaid makes is when she states “the way they squat down over a hole they have made in the ground, the hole itself is something to marvel at.”  Kincaid is clearly talking about tourists that stare at the way natives take care of nature calling and how it is ugly of them to gawk at the way these people who are most likely not as well off and not as clever as the tourist.  I am certain that she, Kincaid, is telling the audience that it is obvious that their holiday in which they take part in sight seeing is ugly, especially when they watch the natives like a caged animal in the zoo.  The part of Jamaica Kincaid’s “The Ugly Tourist” that hits hardest for me is her final paragraph where she explains the cruelty of your travels and how the “natives are too poor to go anywhere.” 

Originally appeared as a short article in Harper’s Magazine (September 1988), and later it was included as the opening chapter to Kincaid’s novella “A Small Place”.