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.