Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, published in 2003, is a collection of short stories by ZZ Packer about the lives of young black men and women in small-town America. The title story, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” was first printed in 2000 in The New Yorker. The short story collection was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, was named as a New York Times Notable Book, and was chosen by John Updike for the Today Show Book Club. Packer has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.

The stories take place 1961 through the 1990s, referencing segregation, the civil rights movement, and the 1995 Million Man March in Washington DC. Even when the stories surround major historical events, however, they are about average people finding their way in the world and defining their identities. Each of these stories recounts small moments, failures and successes, and the ways in which racial division and oppression affect the lives of African Americans throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Plot Summary

In the first story, “Brownies,” Laurel attends Girl Scout camp with her all-black Brownies troop. The girls vow revenge on an all-white troop when one of the girls believes that she hears them call a member of Laurel’s troop a racial slur. When the girls confront the white troop, they discover that they are intellectually disabled. On the bus ride home, they mock the disabled girls, leading to a discussion about how those who have felt mistreated will do the same to others.

“Every Tongue Will Confess” is about Clareese Mitchell, a black nurse who is cross-eyed and devoutly religious, although she is angry that the men at her church treat her like she doesn’t matter. At work, Clareese often gets in trouble for sharing her faith with patients. Then she meets Cleophus Sanders, a patient and blues musician who is interested in her. At the end of the story, he shows up when Clareese invites him to church.

In “Our Lady of Peace,” Lynnea, a young black woman, moves to Baltimore and ends up teaching English in an inner-city high school. The students refuse to listen to Lynnea until Sheba, a black teenager with a criminal record, intimidates her classmates into behaving. After a confrontation in class, Lynnea discovers that Sheba is pregnant. She takes out her frustration by hitting two black teens with her car, and as she drives away, she realizes her teaching career is over.

 “The Ant of the Self” describes Spurgeon, a high-achieving black teen who bails his father, Ray, out of jail after a DUI. Ray forces Spurgeon to drive him from Kentucky to Washington DC for the 1995 Million Man March, where Spurgeon confronts his troubled relationship with his father and his fear of turning out like him.

The title story, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” is about a young black woman named Dina in her freshman year at Yale. Dina tries hard to alienate others and preserve her solitude until Heidi, a white woman, forces her way into Dina’s life. When Heidi announces she is a lesbian, Dina ends their friendship, and she later leaves Yale, deciding she doesn’t belong.

“Speaking in Tongues” follows a 14-year-old black girl named Tia who decides she wants to live in Atlanta with her mother, who abandoned her. Tia runs away, but when she calls someone she believes is her mother, the woman claims not to know her. Alone and broke, Tia meets Dezi, a 32-year-old pimp and drug dealer who is kind at first but becomes predatory. With help from a prostitute, Tia escapes to presumably go home.

Dina, who may or may not be the same character as the protagonist of the title story, moves to Japan in “Geese.” After a summer working at an amusement park with her new friend Ari, Dina is unemployed. Ari invites Dina to live in his apartment, and he subsequently welcomes several other houseguests, all of whom are out of work. They starve and struggle to survive, and Dina decides to have sex for money to help feed the group.

The final story, “Doris is Coming,” takes place in 1961. Doris a young black woman who desperately wants to join in the historical civil rights protests, but her reverend tells Doris that the protests are only a distraction from God. A rich white girl named Olivia befriends Doris and pushes her to break the rules. At the end of the story, Doris stages her own individual protest at a whites-only lunch counter, where she sits and refuses to leave.