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Library
The Mill Reef Club exemplifies the ways in which racism and white supremacy continue to shape the trajectory of independent Antigua, especially in relationship to the tourist industry there. Founded by people who wanted to own and enjoy a part of the island without having to mix with the native (in other words, Black) Antiguans or face any of the issues of corruption and mismanagement that influence life there, the Mill Reef Club operates as a colony-within-a-colony, a place cut off almost entirely from its host country of Antigua. Money and privilege allow the Mill Reef Club residents to hold themselves apart from Antiguans while residence on the island gives them a sense of ownership over its amenities—like the library they want to restore—and citizens—at least the ones that Mill Reef Club residents employ in their homes as domestic workers or in their businesses as employees.
Mill Reef Club Quotes in A Small Place
The A Small Place quotes below all refer to the symbol of Mill Reef Club. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3
Quotes
But if you saw the old library, situated as it was, in a big, old wooden building painted a shade of yellow that is beautiful to people like me, with its wide verandah, its big, always open windows, its rows and rows of shelves filled with books, its beautiful wooden tables and chairs for sitting and reading, […] the beauty of us sitting there like communicants at an altar, taking in, again and again, the fairy tale of how we met you, your right to do the things you did, how beautiful you were, are, and always will be; if you could see all of that in just one glimpse, you would see why my heart would break at the dung heap that now passes for a library in Antigua.
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I then went to see a woman whose family had helped to establish the Mill Reef Club […] who was very active in getting the old library restored […] After I mentioned the library to her, the first thing she told me was that she always encouraged her girls and her girls’ children to use the library, and by her girls she meant grownup Antiguan women (not unlike me) who work in her gift shop as seamstresses and saleswomen. She said to me then what everybody in Antigua says sooner or later: The government is for sale; anybody from anywhere can come to Antigua and for a sum of money can get what he wants […] I could see the pleasure she took in pointing out to me the gutter into which a self-governing—black—Antigua had placed itself.
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Mill Reef Club Symbol Timeline in A Small Place
The timeline below shows where the symbol Mill Reef Club appears in A Small Place. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
The Mill Reef Club also represents the Antigua of Kincaid’s childhood. North Americans founded the members-only, invitation-only club because...
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In Kincaid’s mind, the kinds of people the Mill Reef Club represents seemed to enjoy behaving in inhuman ways. She remembers a Czechoslovakian refugee who fled...
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Chapter 3
...“imperious and stuck up,” but now she appears apologetic and desperate. The people from the Mill Reef Club will contribute money for repairing the old library—but not to make the new one more...
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...houses a carnival troupe—inspires her to consider the state of post-independence Antigua and ask why Mill Reef Club residents should have such a say over the library’s future.
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Kincaid visits the daughter of the Mill Reef Club ’s founder. This woman has a vested interest in restoring the old library—but also a...
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