She uses the pretense, as she has perfected it, to suppress the feelings. Dina’s pretense, however, fails her in a way in that she does not realize that she is falling for her female lesbian friend. While at Yale, Dina uses an excuse to attract attention to herself and succeeds in getting the concern of the dean. Dina as an Icon for African American Girls This particular paper shall provide an analysis of “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” short story. As such, in the collection, there are such stories as “Brownies,” “Every Tongue Shall Confess,” “Our Lady of Peace,” “The Ant of the Self,” the title story, “Speaking in Tongues,” “Geese,” and “Doris Is Coming.” Though the main characters are different in these pieces of writing, Dina appears in several of them, linking Packer’s works with common theme. This story is a part of a collection with the same name that comprises eight short stories. Have you ever wanted to be somewhere and then discovered you really didn’t want to be there? Was it a place you thought you should want to be? Did you leave? Was it hard to leave if you did?ġ) Dina makes the comment she makes perhaps partly for effect.ZZ Packer’s “ Drinking coffee elsewhere” is a story about a young African American girl named Dina who uses escapism and pretense as a survival tactic in a mostly white-dominated university. But she meets Heidi and they create a sort of friendship until Dina finds a way to put distance between them and finally ends the relationship all together.ġ) A good deal of this story is about Dina feeling like an outsider in a place she’s supposed to belong. Her roommate moves out, and she is branded a pariah from day one. This does not go well, and she finds herself in regular psychiatric counseling. In group circle she tells the group, when asked what inanimate object she wanted to be, that she wants to be a revolver so that she can wipe out all of humanity. In “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”, the title story from this collection, we meet Dina, an African American freshman woman at Yale on Orientation day. What’s your experience with girls (or boys) like Arnette? How did you handle girls (boys) like her when you were that age? Were you that girl (boy)?
Have you ever had an opportunity to speak up and not take it? How did you feel afterward? Did someone else speak up? Did you wish after that that you had been the one to speak up?ģ) Arnette seems to be a trouble maker She likes to keep things going. Instead, she follows along as Arnette expects. Have you ever acted on someone else’s information without validating it for yourself? What was the outcome? Did you come to regret that decision?Ģ) There a couple of places where the narrator could simply refuse to follow along with Arnette’s plan. This theme resonates in particular with the (dis)information age in which we currently reside. What they discover, though, is that things aren’t always what they seem, and “Snot” must make the decision to be her own person.ġ) Part of this story is about “Snot” participating in the ambush of the white girls without really having all the information. When Arnette comes back from a trek to the communal bath to announce that one of the white girls called Daphne a “nigger’, everyone wants a piece of the white girls.
None of the girls has really ever seen a white girl before, not in any meaningful way, not up close. When they arrive, there is a white troop also arriving, and from there things get interesting. This story, told from the first person perspective of “Snot” is about a Black Brownie troop heading to a campout.
The following selections from the text will create a lively discussion of contemporary themes
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