The Writings of Jamaica Kincaid and Alex La Guma
             In works of the poetic imagination, repetition is often used as a
             rhetorical or literary trope to give aid to the beauty and rhythmic verbal
             texture of a written work. Both the South African writer of the 1960's Alex
             La Guma and Antigua's (and North America's) contemporary novelist and
             essayist Jamaica Kincaid could be called poetic authors in the sense that
             they are both master craftspeople of the linguistic, prosaic art of
             writing. They deploy repetition to add beauty to the texts they unweave
             before the reader's senses. Yet repetition in the titular short story of
             La Guma's "A Walk in the Night" uses the narrative functions of repetition
             as a way of showing the tragic sameness of the central characters lives
             under an oppressive White regime, as well as a way of rendering the
             ugliness and repetitive texture of daily life in poetic prose. Jamaica
             Kincaid, in contrast, in viewing the world of her native Antigua as a place
             that has been liberated from colonialist rule in the author's lifetime,
             uses repetition as a device to thematically and philosophically emphasizes
             the sameness that often exists in corrupt political regimes, although she
             ultimately is glad that her people have been liberated from colonial rule.
             One of the most sophisticated ways that Kincaid deploys the device of
             narrative, as opposed to purely verbal or lyric repetition (such as
             repeating a phrase) is to approach the same narrative object and landscape
             through different observational eyes. Kincaid begins the narration of A
             Small Place, her autobiographical history of her home island, through the
             eyes what she sees as a typical North American tourist. "If you go to
             Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane,
             you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V.
             C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua....