#527 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer

#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.”

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35

#450 Brownies- ZZ Packer

#450 Brownies- ZZ Packer

This is the first story in Packer’s collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.  A troupe of Brownies (younger girl scouts if there is someone who doesn’t know what that is) attend a camping weekend. They are from a predominantly black south Atlantic Suburb and they fixate on an all white Troupe 909.  The “leader” of the girls says she heard a racial slur being thrown in their direction, and she rouses the others into action.

What follows is a pretty great description of child group/peer/tribal behavior. Social archetypes play their rolls: the leader, the peacemaker, the troublemaker, the follower, the goody-two-shoes, quiet moral one, etc. Although race is at the heart of the conflict, it does not seem to be the heart of the meaning of this story (although the race dynamics shouldn’t be overlooked). Group activity and peer pressure are a huge part of growing up, especially at a Girl Scout camp.

Notable Passages: “The word ‘secret’ had a built-in importance, the modifier form of the word carried more clout than the noun. A secret meant nothing; it was like gossip: just a bit of unpleasant knowledge about someone who happened to be someone other than yourself. A secret meeting, or a secret club was entirely different.”

“Even though I didn’t want to fight, was afraid of fighting, I felt like I was a part of the rest of the troop; like I was defending something.”

 “When you’ve been made to feel bad for so long, you jump at the chance to do it to others.”

Rating: 9-9-10-9 Total= 37