Andrea Levy's Small Island follows the fates of four characters —two Jamaican and two English—before and after World War II, in England and Jamaica. The prologue is written from the perspective of the English narrator, Queenie, who remembers going to the British Empire Exhibition as a child.

"'I want to go,' I said, because there was nothing interesting to look at. But then suddenly there was a man. An African man. A black man who looked to be carved from melting chocolate. I clung to Emily but she shooed me off. He was right next to me, close enough so I could see him breathing. A monkey man sweating a smell of mothballs. Blacker than when you smudge your face with a sooty cork. The droplets of sweat on his forehead glistened and shone like jewels. His lips were brown, not pink like they should be, and they bulged with air like bicycle tyres. His hair was woolly as a black shorn sheep. His nose, squashed flat, had two nostrils big as train tunnels. And he was looking down at me.

"'Would you like to kiss him?' Graham said. He nudged me, teasing, and pushed me forward— closer to this black man.

And Emily giggled. 'Go on Queenie, kiss him, kiss him.'

"This man was still looking down at me. I could feel the blood rising in my face, turning me crimson, as he smiled a perfect set of pure blinding white teeth. The inside of his mouth was pink and his face was coming closer and closer to mine. He could have swallowed me up, this big n***** man. But instead he said, in clear English, 'Perhaps we could shake hands instead?'

"Graham's smile fell off his face. And I shook an African man's hand. It was warm and slightly sweaty like anyone else's. I shook his hand up and down for several seconds. And he bowed his head to me and said, 'It's nice to meet you.'" (Prologue)

Stereotype: African men are big, scary savages.

In this scene, Andrea Levy shows this stereotype in action through her English narrator Queenie. When Queenie sees the African man she immediately sees him as a stereotype. From her perspective, he's dark, he's big, and his lips and his nose are weird. He seems dangerous.

But then this stereotype is destroyed by the African man's own actions. He speaks English (gasp!), he's polite (bigger gasp!), and his hand is warm and sweaty just like anyone else's (biggest gasp!).

This passage shows us how we project our own ideas and preconceptions onto other people, especially when they don't look like us. All Queenie sees is this man's skin color and the things that make him different from her. From there, she jumps to all kinds of conclusions about him. By giving us Queenie's negative preconceptions first and then having the African man contradict them through his words and actions, Levy shows what a gap there is between stereotype and reality.