ZZ Packer

I enjoy Packer's writing, especially the details of heat and scent that put me firmly in her world.

I loved the first story in the book, the one about the Brownie Girl Scout campout. It was refreshing to read a story with authentic details about Girl Scouting. For example, Tom Perrotta mentioned Girl Scouts briefly in The Leftovers, but they were doing fundraising for another organization, which Girl Scouts aren't allowed to do. Yes, yes, this is a horribly nitpicky detail to cite, but as a show more lifelong Girl Scout, I found Packer's details helped me form a connection with her and her characters. If the details hadn't been authentic, I wouldn't have felt like trusting her characters. As it was, I sang the "Brownie Smile Song" and "Make New Friends" along with her characters and that helped me to connect with them, which made the story all the more effective.

But oh, man, are her stories bleak.

Packer traps her characters. They're trapped by religion, by birth, by race. They're trapped by patterns of behavior and social structures designed to keep them safe and, when they attempt to break out of these structures whether to go to college or to Japan or to Baltimore, they inevitably find ruin and isolation. Of course, they were isolated before they attempted to break away, so her characters are largely damned if they do and damned if they don't.

In addition, there's a theme of parental abandonment, either by death or by prison or by addiction that lends a certain "original sin" aspect to the stories. Perhaps these characters are destined by their parents' situations to never be able to make a good go of it.

It's altogether too much like real life, which is kind of a downer.

I think it would have been less of a downer if this had been a novel rather than a series of short stories. If it were a novel, there would have been just one experience of desolation rather than one after another after another.

So, I'd like to read more ZZ Packer to see what else she does with her detailed writing style, just not until after I've read something lighter, like something with ponies and bunnies and pigs who herd sheep. show less

The eight stories in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere reveal an author finding her voice and, perhaps, revelling in its timbre. The best of these stories — I’m thinking of “Brownies,”, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” and “Geese” — show remarkable poise, thoughtfulness, and trust; trust in her readers and in herself. None of the stories is especially innovative. Rather they show a young writer coming into her strength. Rightly lauded by a host of literary luminaries, she is a writer show more on the verge. What comes next will, I think, be truly exciting.

Packer takes on different narrative personae, but in many of her best stories in this collection the voice is of a highly intelligent black woman (whether very young or more mature) gingerly exploring the world around her, more or less successfully. Not always self-aware, the narrative voice is nonetheless urgent and beguiling. It is as though the future is just around the corner and our protagonist is determined to race forward to it rather than wait for its arrival. Inevitably this leads to situations that are unpredictable for the narrator, whether that confusion is due to the subtleties (or lack thereof) of racial demarcation, sexual orientation, or ethno-economic exoticism. When you stride out to meet the future, it often finds you unprepared and scrambling to regain your footing.

Gently recommended. And looking forward to whatever ZZ Packer decides to write next. show less

This is a splendid collection of African-American stories with a zing. They are biting, funny, and extremely well told.

In “Brownies”, a troop of Brownie scouts at camp decide to beat up the members of the all-white Brownie troop 909 by claiming they heard one of the troop members saying the word “nigger”. The meeting ground was the girls bathroom. The black Brownies’ encounter with Troop 909 was not at all like what they had imagined. This story is uproariously funny, but it has a show more sincere message.

In “Our Lady of Peace”, Lanea suffers through her first year of teaching at a Baltimore inner city school where she reveals mixed feelings to Sheba, a tough, tall unwed mother whose residence is in Our Lady of Peace.

“The Ant of the Self” follows Spurgeon who borrows his mom’s car to take his dad out of jail after posting bail. Little does Spurgeon know, at that time, that he and his dad would be headed to the Million Man March in Washington, DC, to engage in his dad’s entrepreneurial idea. show less

This story collection really surprised me. "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self," which I read recently, also featured talented young people of color trying to find their way in the world. What I found so interesting about "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" was that the stories did not end triumphantly. They explore what happens when a person does not immediately transcend his or her difficult background. The title story in particular takes a hard look at the social isolation of arriving in a show more privileged world from such a low-income background. "Geese" took that idea to an even greater extreme, leaving its main character failing to fend for herself in distant Japan. The characters in these stories don't emerge with their spirits intact on the other side, and it's difficult to see a real way out for most of them. show less