Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Rating:
Summary: BLACK BOOK LOVER TOP 10 of 2004!!
Review: AS THE NEW YEAR IS UPON US, I OFFICIALLY OFFER YOU MY LIST OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS THAT I'VE READ IN 2004. THIS IS OUT OF ABOUT 84 BOOKS THAT I'VE READ THIS YEAR. EVERY SINGLE BOOK ON THIS LIST IS A MASTERPIECE WORTH BUYING. YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED WITH GREAT LITERATURE LIKE THE FOLLOWING:

"THE DARKEST CHILD"--Delores Phillips

The finest, most dramatic debut I've read in years. Top notch and gut-wrenching. This is by far the best book of 2004.

"BRICK LANE"--Monica Ali

Superb entry into a world foreign yet all too familiar. Flawless, beautiful writing.

"HOTTENTOT VENUS"--Barbara Chase Riboud

A True Story. Which makes this book all the more shocking and tragic. By now you've heard of the kidnapped and dehumanized South African woman paraded in the 1800's Europe as a "freak" because of her huge posterior and the apron over her genitals. Chase Riboud chronicles the tale perfectly and makes it far more interesting than just history. The fact that "Sarah" was like a Pop Superstar of her day makes it all the more chilling in my opinion. A definite Must-Read.

"FLESH AND THE DEVIL"--Kola Boof

Totally original, unexpected black love story. Chock full of African history, U.S. black history, fantastic plot twists, pulsating sex, equally dazzling "lovemaking", brilliant observations about race, color and sexism and plenty of risk-taking by the sensational Sudanese-born Kola Boof, truly a NEW STAR in the "epic" sense. Fabulous!

"ERASURE"---Percival Everett

I know. I'm late reading this one. But it's classic, fantastic, the greatest book ever written about being a "black" writer today. SUPERB. 10 Stars.

"A DISTANT SHORE"--Caryl Phillips

Great novel about "human beings" ripped apart in their own world and then thrown together in new equally dreadful surroundings. A black man and a white woman are juxtaposed in England with terribly beautiful insight by the writer. It's a hard book to explain, except that it's about human beings finding their real true minds. Superb!!!! I give this one 10 stars.

"DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE"--Z.Z. Packer

The breakout debut of the new Alice Walker and Toni Morrison rolled into one. Z.Z. Packer is outrageously talented and brilliant. These sparse, witty, intelligent, insightful short stories will bring you to tears, make you laugh and truly astonish you.

"THE KNOWN WORLD"--Edward P. Jones

This book starts off kind of "slow", but once you get into it, it's quite shocking, easily one of the most important stories told in a decade. Jones deserves all the accolades and awards he's received for this masterful masterpiece of the new century.

"LOVE"--Toni Morrison

Still the undisputable greatest writer writing. Toni Morrison offers up one of her very best novels, the most underrated and overlooked novel of the year. Absolutely meszmerizing, a bute.

Rating:
Summary: A blackadelic Flannery O'Connor in the making
Review: I gotta agree with Gregory Baird. These fics are very much hit-and-miss. EVERY TONGUE is a brilliant exercise in empathy. The protagonist is a Christian-fundamentalist creep, but ZZ treated her with a certain amount of respect. Clareese gets redeemed thru another person. (Instead of merely thru Jesus.)

Rating:
Summary: LOVE LOVE LOVE this collection
Review: I had previously read a few of ZZ Packer's stories in lit magazines such as ZOETROPE and The New Yorker and I have been anxiously awaiting this collection. I have not been disappointed.

"Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" is a collection of unique, startling and at times, brutally truthful stories by Packer, a new author. All these stories, in some way, touch upon themes of alienation, the search for truth (whatever that truth is for the characters), of approval, and of identity. Stories range from the title piece, "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere," about a young black woman who enters a ivy league university and must struggle not only with alienation and her identity but the death of her mother, to "Geese," a story about a sister who travels to Tokyo to make loads of money only to find herself destitute and in the company of people just as down and out as she is.

What I enjoy the most about these eight stories is that Packer tells stories about black people, but she does so multiculturally, or "realistically". The world isn't full of just black people or just white people. The worlds in Packer's stories travel the globe from Baltimore, to Yale University, to Tokyo. We see a vast array of people and places and situations, and Packer is not afraid to show us all these facets, nor is she afraid to show us the bleakness of reality. Her stories do not end with cotton candy and happily ever afters. Sometimes, life is hard, and Packer portrays these times exquisitely.

Anyone who is interested in reading well written stories about the facets of black life, will no doubt enjoy ZZ Packer's debut collection as much as I have.

Shon Bacon

Rating:
Summary: Left me hanging...
Review: I'd heard so much about this author, even read an excerpt of "Brownies". Packer is an excellent writer but the characters in these stories are not very well developed and the endings were soft. Each story drew me in but once there I lost interest in the characters because there wasn't enough to hold onto. I kept thinking as I read the stories that I would love to see how this writer develops over the next ten-twenty years. I see great things for her future work. This one didn't quite do it for me.
Taxes, Death & Trouble author CM Miller

Rating:
Summary: wasn't impressed
Review: Obviously, I'm in the minority with the reviewers here. A couple of the stories were impressive - the first in particular. But they ended in a confusing place, with not much resolved that I could see. The minor characters weren't developed enough to make it clear why they did what they did, and had sudden changes of heart. Like in the first, it was never clear why Daphne decided to be nice to the narrator - sure, she was not the kind of girl to join in bullying, but why did she choose then to start supporting the narrator? It just was not clear. Also, there was not enough information about the narrator - why she got picked on apart from being quiet? Considering all the accolades showered on the author, though, I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I missed something in the book.

I picked up the book because I was hoping to learn more about a culture that I have never experienced firsthand. But the flatness of the characters kept me from doing this. They could have almost been any color, even Caucasian, apart from the narrators of each story, that is.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely perfect
Review: there's nothing to not love in this collection from packer, not a sentence to stumble over, not a story to discount. absolutely brillant.

Rating:
Summary: No need to think twice
Review: When ZZ Packer writes her first novel, I'll be standing in line with my $25 or $26. This work of short story literature was worthy of my time. The first short, Brownies, transported me back into time into the early 70's when I wore my brownie uniform, and went through similar experiences. The Ant of the Self was an extremely moving story about father and son. This story, I wanted to continue. I applaud ZZ Packer's prose! These are stories you will read again and again.

Rating:
Summary: I PREDICT...These 2 Women
Review: Z.Z. PACKER VS. KOLA BOOF.

TWO NEW BLACK WOMAN AUTHORS, TWO SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS.

AND...THEIR "DUET" APPEARANCE IN YET A THIRD SHORT STORY COLLECTION.

I've read two masterful short story collections in the last 7 days, both by new up and coming Black Women writers (Z.Z. Packer's awesomely nuanced "Drinking Coffee" and Kola Boof's disturbing "Long Train to the Redeeming Sin"), and I find it downright painful to say which one I like better. Both collections, to me, are masterpieces.

Why am I mentioning these two very different women in the same breath? KEEP READING and you'll find out!!

This sensible rainy day collection by Z.Z. Packer is much more publicized by the mainstream media and known to the public, but I can't say that all the praise and adulation isn't well deserved. Z.Z. Packer writes better than Kola Boof, I think, in that she's more focused, professionally trained and clinical. Each story in "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" is really rendered as a slice of real life, the author's personal views seeming to be cleansed from the canvas so that the nuances and absurdities of life can seep through, very suttle yet very powerfully. It's amazing how skillful and calm Packer's writing is considering the ferocity of the inner themes, but she pulls it off with such a masterful ease that you almost feel that you're reading a hybrid of Hemingway and Alice Walker with a little Percival Everett (whom I love!) mixed in.

My favorite story, the one that sticks with me, is the one about the little prejudiced black girls. It's a hoot!

"Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" is a calm, subdued but very powerfully written debut and I look forward to her upcoming novel about Buffalo Soldiers.

As for Kola Boof's "Long Train to the Redeeming Sin", all I can say is WOW. It's hard to describe the book because the author is so non-author-like. Unlike Packer, Kola Boof is from Africa and was never formally educated. Kola Boof's style is totally unorthodox and preachy in a sense, but then so earthy and truthful and emotional in another sense that you simply cannot look away from her creations. She writes like a singer. Her collection is powerful like Packer's "Drinking Coffee"--but ultimately more passionate and shocking. These stories of African women facing issues like skin color prejudice, hair anxiety and genital mutilation and rape by white colonizers is handled so sweeping and matter-of-factly and with such authority that of the two collections, I have to give Kola Boof's the nod for being more unforgettable.

THE REAL TREAT...is that both these two black women writers appear together in the very hip, witty short story collection "POLITICALLY INSPIRED" (edited by Stephen Elliot), showcasing a two very different stories, that somehow (to me), resonate with the same level of consciousness and sadness about one theme--"death and loss".

Kola Boof's story in "POLITICALLY INSPIRED" is the more showy and adventurous one, and actually, it flat out satisfied me more than Packer's contribution, but the voices of the two writers continues to intrigue me as they are both young black women, new on the scene and much talked about. It will be fun to see which of these girls--Z.Z. Packer, Suzan Lori Parks, Kola Boof or ZADIE SMITH takes over the mantle from Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.

If you haven't guessed yet, I'm PREDICTING that the classy, somber Z.Z. Packer and the provocative, wild and mysterious Kola Boof are the clear and present frontrunners. They're both AWESOME and unique, but also seem to write from some driven inner voice, politically, sexually and racially, much like Morrison and Walker once did.

Anyone who reads "Drinking Coffee" and "Long Train to the Redeeming Sin" will see what I mean.











Rating:
Summary: Perfect Powerful Prose
Review: Z.Z.Packer's much-anticipated short story collection is a celebration of prose perfection. Her critically acclaimed short stories are action packed slices of American, edgy and provocative portrayals of life. Her stories project real people having real issues. "Brownies" is about a Brownie troop of Black girls who are confronted by a white girl troop. "Our Lady of Peace" explores the deterioration of the public school system, while six other stories haunt your soul. I love that!
Her command of the English language is poured into every paragraph. Reading her work gives me more respect for the writing craft. It is a skillful art form that requires study and thought, which proves my point that not anyone who can put pen to paper deserves to be called a writer. Packer's works make that fact evident and makes me want to work on my own re-writes.
If you want to delve into a richly, intoxicating book, then this one is for you. Your five senses will be moved by each story and your intellect, intuition and heart will be challenged. My favorite passage comes from "Our Lady of Peace":
But any place was better than Odair County, Kentucky. She'd hated how everyone their oozed out their words, and how humble everyone pretended to be...Her [Lynnea] family was one of four black families in the county, and if another white person ever told her how "interesting" her hair was, or how good it was that she didn't have to worry about getting a tan- ha ha- or asked her opinion anytime Jesse Jackson farted, she'd strangle them.
I gave this collection 5 pens because it is brilliant without any flaws, worthy of anyone's library. This book is a classic of which I'm sure my three-year-old daughter will have to read in English literature some day. Wonderful!

Dee Y. Stewart
R.E.A.L. Reviewers


Rating:
Summary: Smart People Surrounded by Fools=Great Stories
Review: ZZ Packer's masterful stories deal with the crisis of belonging that many African-Americans face because, as individuals, people of all races, including their own, have monolithic expectations of them, which their individuality defies. Packer's characters break out of any kind of preconceived molds and faced with Groupthink, pressures to conform, and the patronization and condescension of liberal whites, these characters become infuriated by the stupidity that surrounds them. The style of the stories is intensely realistic, often satirical, bitter, nihilistic. At the same time Packer brings a deep humanity, complexity, and sympathy to her cast of misfits, all who search for belonging and never find it.

In "Brownies" African-American girls stir a brouhaha with a dubious charge of having heard a racial epithet uttered by the white Brownies. The story in many ways is a funny and disturbing exploration of Groupthink whereby the black Brownies never really heard the epithet but get caught up in the self-righteousness and mission of their revenge. In "Every Tongue Shall Confess" a cross-eyed, homely lady, Clareese, plays by the rules, reads her Bible, and works hard as a nurse, only to be exploited by her church deacons who use her as a door mat. We cringe as we watch Clareese sink deeper and deeper into loneliness. In "Our Lady of Peace" a young woman takes on teaching in a public school in order to change nihilistic, lawless high school children, but in a reversal, the children make her a nihilistic misanthropist. The teacher Lynnea Davis not only begins to despise the children, but the teachers she works with. In the "Ant of the Self" a precocious teenage boy named Spurgeon must face the dilemmas of having an alcoholic bully of a father who drags his son to the Million-Man March where Spurgeon, the innocent party, is berated by rhetorically-inflamed black men to respect and love and appreciate his father for taking him to such a great event when in fact his hustler of a father simply took him to the march in order to sell a bunch of stolen exotic birds. In "Speaking in Tongues" a young girl runs away from home where her overly pious aunt subjects her to the abuses of a dysfunctional, abusive church. However, running away to Atlanta to find her mother, the young girl discovers that the secular world-full of pimps, hustlers, and libertines-offers no refuge.

For all the diversity of these stories, we can see Packer's general themes-her animosity against Groupthink, her loathing of convenient stereotypical thinking, her objection to the use of religion and false piety in order to bully others, her disdain for the manner in which clichés offer people false solutions and self-aggrandizement. Packer is a major writer tackling major themes and I am eagerly awaiting her next publication.