#527 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer
This is a story about alienation. Dina is an outcast at
Yale. Being a black woman in this environment made her automatically different,
but her isolation—mostly caused by herself—led to a very lonely college experience.
Another girl, an outsider herself, reaches out to her, and
Dina reluctantly allows her into her world. “The girl turned to face me,
smiling weakly, as though her triumph was not in getting me to open the door
but in that fact that she was able to at all when she was accustomed to
crying.”
Heidi is gay, and Dina is inexperienced in any sexual or
romantic way so she is confused. She is hiding, figuratively behind a strong,
gruff personality and hiding literally in her dorm room she rarely leaves. Heidi
may seem meek but she is self-aware and honest about who she is. Dina
pretends. She won't let a boy walk her
home, because she is afraid he’ll see her poor neighborhood; she is ashamed of
being week, so she tells her mother she lost the food stamps; she watches the
coming out rally from her window.
Dina denies all opportunities to become less isolated,
becoming more and more selfish with each rejection.
Notable Passage: “Constantly saying what one doesn’t mean
accustoms the mouth to meaningless phrases.”
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