On Seeing England for the First Time

So when I think of Carribean Islanders, I do not think of bitterness and resentment and the assimilation of a culture during the colonial period.
I think of sunny beaches, cheerful dispositions, and good music.
So this essay was a real eye opener. Because the voice of the colonists is a voice that is rarely heard over the voice of the people doing the colonizing... if that makes sense. Jamaica Kincaid had a completely unique perspective that I had never even thought about before. And her point is so valid.
It's proposterous to try and instill the culture of England (where it's predominately cold, rainy, and grey) on the Carribean Island of Antigua (tropical climate, where they probably never would have come up with tea and crumpets to their life).

"But this breakfast business was Made in England like almost everything else that surrounded us, the exceptions being the sea, the sky, and the air we breathed."

Sadly, this is precisely what happened, but this isn't a travesty we hear about. We hear about people dying every day, we hear about North Korea's nuclear threats, and wars in Bahgdad, but when a Western Civilization assimilates an entire culture of people, no one seems to notice.

"I did not know then that this statement was part of a process that would result in my erasure, not my physical erasure, but my erasure all the same."

And the effect that it can have is stunning.

"England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was meaningless, and much about our own lives and much about the very idea of us headed that last list."