Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Z.Z. Packer has a very fresh and unique style of writing. I read the chapters where Dina meets Heidi at Yale, and they become friends. Packer describes their relationship in a vivid and interesting way, using a lot of scene-setting. Packer is also very brave and unusual. For example, the part where they decide to take a shower in the dish room and spray each other with the squirt gun, comes unexpectedly. The author is also comfortable using words which may seem vulgar to some readers. Her characters are very different but they share similar life stories. Dina is black and came to Yale as an honor student from Baltimore, and Heidi is a white Canadian from Vancouver but they have both lost their mothers, and they're both going through an identity crisis and dealing with being outsiders. Dina has to see her psychiatrist Dr.Raeburn while Heidi gets on a podium to announce that she is a lesbian. "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" is written in the first person which makes it very personal and it helps her exposition. What is uniques to Packer's style is the fact that her short stories have open ends, the reader is left to guess what might happen with the protagonists. She uses comparison and contrast to describe her protagonists, for example Dina compares Heidi to a beautiful dolphin, etc. Packer's description makes readers use all their senses to understand her story. For example, she uses the metaphor of drinking coffee elsewhere to explain her protagonist's need to escape from pretending and fitting in everybody's expectations. She writes: " I remembered the morning of my mother's funeral. I'd been given milk to settle my stomach; I'd pretended it was coffee. I imagined I was drinking coffee elsewhere. Some Arabic-speaking country where the thick coffee served in little cups was so strong it could keep you awake for days. Some Arabic country where I'd sit in a tented café and be more than happy to don a veil."