Short-Story Form and Diversity Management in ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

摘要

[Abstract] Historically, ethnic minority writers have only rarely shown much concern with the intra-group diversity that one frequently finds in sociological surveys and statistics which classify results according to ethnic categories. ZZ Packer’s collection of short stories Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003) presents us with a set of African-American characters who, despite sharing the surface difference of their skin color, display a much wider range of “otherness” as they have to struggle with the limitations that their age, appearance, religion or family background mark out for them. While it is true that most of Packer’s protagonists —generally young girls— are outsiders who develop all sorts of coping strategies to deal with the pain that expectations and prejudices inflict on them, it is also apparent that their grievances originate from variegated causes. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Packer succeeds in producing a work of fiction that transcends most of the paradigms so-far used to analyze characters in texts by black women —i.e. suspended/ assimilated/ emergent woman or invisible/ feminist/ womanist heroine—. She manages to do so by having such a strong grip on reality that we, the readers, cannot help but sympathize with young individuals pushed by circumstances into making very difficult decisions.