 First edition | |
| Author | ZZ Packer |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Riverhead Books |
Publication date | 2003 |
| Pages | 238 |
| ISBN | 9781573222624 |
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a 2003 collection of eight short stories by ZZ Packer. Packer was given an advance for thousands of dollars and she promoted the book in a 13 city tour. The book deals with race, gender, identity, and the need for belonging. It received multiple awards.
In the titular story, young black Yale University freshman Dina joins a series of orientation games that are meant to help students bond. In a game where students have to answer what inanimate object they would like to be, Dina says a revolver which leads her to have meetings with university staff and a psychiatrist. Her answer transforms her from an "honor roll student" into a "dangerous outcast" to others. Dina insults others, lies to the psychiatrist, and stays away from students who are also black. She begins an affair with a white female student who also has no friends, but Dina stops their relationship when the white girl publicly states that she is a lesbian due to Dina never being true to herself.[1][2]
The story Speaking in Tongues is about a 14-year-old named Tia who runs away from her great-aunt to try to find her mother who abandoned her. Tia fails to find her mother in Atlanta, Georgia, but she meets a prostitute named Marie and a hustler named Dezi. After Tia has a sexual encounter with Dezi, Tia has a "visionary feeling that she's been unable to achieve in church".[1][2]
Clareese discovers that the scriptures of her church are keeping her stuck in Every Tongue Shall Confess.[1][2]
Doris Is Coming is based in 1961 in Louisville, Kentucky, in which segregation was ending.[1][2]
The only male main character, Spurgeon, must deal with a father who bullies him and abandons him in a city in the story The Ant of the Self.[2]
In Our Lady of Peace, Lynnea teaches inner-city children after moving to Baltimore, Maryland, from Kentucky.[1]
Another girl named Dina visits Tokyo, Japan, to become rich in Geese.[1]
In Brownies, a Brownie troop with only black girls want to attack a white Brownie troop while they are camping, but they find out that life can be cruel to anyone upon discovering that the troop is for girls with a learning disability.[1]
Packer was given an advance for thousands of dollars and she promoted the book in a 13 city tour. The title story was in The New Yorker's 2000 issue of debut fiction.[3] The book deals with race, gender, identity, and the need for belonging.[4]
Bomb said, "This set of stories is a pleasure to dive into for the wit, the writing, the characters, and the novel plots, but most of all for the human truth that in the search for self-knowledge, we find we each defy category."[5] E. Ce Miller of Bustle wrote that Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is "the one book every woman should read in her 20s."[6] Packer was an honoree for the 2006 National Book Award for the 5 under 35 category due to the book.[7] The book won an Alex Award from the American Library Association in 2004.[8] It was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.[4] John Updike chose the book as a selection for the Today Show book club on NBC in 2003.[9] Gale published a study guide about the book.[4]