She starts pretending since the day her mother died to not accept her own life’s situations and the differences she has as the person she is.
ZZ Packer shows us Dina completely rejects her sexuality therefore she ends up rejecting everything she really is. ZZ Packer shows Dina likes Heidi’s companionship and has some sort of feelings for her, but never accepts she is in love with her only friend and decides to get away from her instead of accepting she has sexual preferences for women. Her sexual identity becomes more confusing to her when she sleeps next to Heidi for the whole winter and showers with her after work (Packer 123-125). The feeling of abhorrence toward her father makes her develop a rejection for men. It is also clear she hates her dad, the only male figure she has had in her life and it means only one thing to her: detestation. At first, she says she is misanthrope she assures to Heidi she doesn’t like boys or girls then, she seems to like Heidi. It appears that rather than facing the pain, she chooses to cast away everyone else by taking herself to some other place in her mind where there is not suffering.ĭina also has problems identifying and accepting her own sexuality. I imagined I was drinking coffee elsewhere” (Packer 128). “I’d been given milk to settle my stomach I’d pretended it was coffee. For instance, when she remembers the morning of her mother’s funeral she pretends she is somewhere else, secluded and alone. Packer shows how Dina rejects her own race and that pretending is her “survival mechanism” (Packer 128) to run away from painful situations and to escape from her reality. She doesn’t want to accept she comes from a humble black family. Here she seems to be embarrassed of the place where she lived. An example of this is when she tells some of her stories to the school psychiatrist, Doctor Raeburn, she recalls “I could not tell him the rest: that I had not wanted the boy to walk me home, that I didn’t want someone with such nice shoes to see where I lived” (Packer 119). Packer presents us the main character to be reluctant and pretending to be someone she is not. The author uses dialogue to show us that Dina’s identity struggles go beyond race and into her social class. Here the author clearly shows that Dina find in Heidi a person to trust in. At some point, her friend Heidi manages to convince her to leave her room to at least eat at commons.
#Z Z PACKER DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE HOW TO#
She is a reticent person, individualistic and doesn’t know how to act in front of others. It is evident Dina is determinate to spend all her years of college locked up in her dorm. ZZ Packer shows us Dina intentionally used the word “revolver” to intimidate the students and to keep them away from her, but also that it was an unconscious way to segregate herself by associating an object -with such as negative connotation like a weapon - with her. When it is Dina’s turn she says “if I had to be any object, I guess I’ve be a revolver” (Packer 106). In one of the games the students are playing they are asked to point out inanimate objects that they would want to be. From the first paragraphs of the story, it seems that the protagonist’s main purpose is to become an outcast. However, the main conflict develops when Dina starts segregating herself from others. As a person of color, you shouldn’t have to fit into any white, patriarchal system” (Packer 106). Once Dina arrives at Yale, ZZ Packer shows there is some sort of racial insensitivity on campus when the white counselor says to Dina during the orientation games “you don’t have to play this game.
Packer uses comparison to contrast the characters of Dina and Heidi and tells us they have similarities: they both passed through similar situations and felt rejected.
Heidi was also rejected and an object of ridicule, because people thought she was promiscuous. ZZ Packer uses dialogue to show us Diana’s identity crisis when she tells Heidi she’s a misanthrope she doesn’t like girls or boys (Packer 110). When Dina meets Heidi, a white student that later on becomes her friend, the author reveals the identity crisis the main character has.
The main themes of the story are identity crisis and self segregation. In the story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”, ZZ Packer show us the main character Dina, a black student at Yale, who wants to be excluded from society and tries to isolate herself from everyone and everything to contain her miserable state of mind, and not try to engage with the outside world or find a way to fit in the student community.
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