Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
ZZ Packer · 2003
One of the most celebrated debut collections in recent American literature. Packer's stories about Black experience, from a Girl Scout troop in Baltimore to a young woman at Yale, combine social precision with narrative surprise.
The case against
Packer's protagonists are one person in different clothes: the smart, watchful young Black outsider inside a hostile institution, observed eight ways. Endings tend to evaporate; story after story builds real pressure, then closes on an image instead of a release. This is workshop irresolution executed at the highest level, and it leaves you admiring and slightly unfed.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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