ZZ Packer's Short Stories "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" Receives Acclaim Everywhere Finalist PEN/Faulkner

Reading ZZ Packer's short story collection "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" is tantamount to the gods drinking ambrosia on Mt. Olympus.  Packer's stories are seething with cunning observations and written with extraordinary flair.  Packer (b Amer. 1973) is on par with paramount writers such as Alice Monroe and Flannery O'Connor.  "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" put her in in the class of 5 under 35 honorees by the Nat'l Book Foundation.  Other short stories by Packer have been published in the Best Short American Stories ('00 & '03).  The protagonists in these coming of age collection are all young blacks.  They all share a keen awareness of being outside the privileged white communities & somewhat apart from their own families & peers.  There is a commonality of perseverance while perceiving the inequality & injustice of being black in a "white man's world."  In the final story "Doris is coming," Doris, a high school student watching the sit-ins and protests of the Civil Rights Movement & wants to be participate despite restraints from her parents & parish.   Doris could "...see that the rest of the world was different from Fourth Street {where she lived}, prettier, more certain, full of laughter and dresses and men who wore hats not only when they went to church but when they want to work in offices and banks too."  The first story in the collection, and my favorite is "Brownies" a group of young black girls are sent to a rural camp for several days and the girls in this troop are egging for a fight with the white girls & acutely aware of the difference in their surroundings from home.  "Wow! Drema said, looking up, Why are all the stars out here?  I never see stars back on Oneida Street."  There is a tipping point to each of these stories where indignation finally gives way to anger or resignation.  In "Our Lady of Peace," Lynette is pushed too far by the unruly disrespectful students she tries to teach and the violence in her classroom spills over where Lynette no longer wishes to restrain herself.  "She had a chance to slow down, and she didn't want to.  She'd scare them, for once.  Make them run.  Her foot slammed on the accelerator for what seemed like not time at all."  Packer's prose is provocative & crystal clear.  Her characters either go over the edge or feel powerless.  The stories possess a stark beauty that is unshakeable.  "She {Doris} knew that she should hurry, but she couldn't.  She had to stop and look.  The sky had just turned her favorite shade of barely lit blue, the kind that came to windows when you couldn't get back to sleep but couldn't quite pry yourself awake."  Rejoice in the energy, hostility, frustration & unflappable characters that leap from these brilliant short stories.