ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: A Serious Attempt at Representing the Diversity of the African- American ExperienceA serious attempt at representing the diversity of the african-american experience.
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URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10835/1751
ISSN: 1578-3820
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25115/odisea.v0i12.229
ISSN: 1578-3820
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25115/odisea.v0i12.229
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Ibarrola-Armendariz, AitorDate
2011Abstract
Racial and ethnic minority writers have only rarely paid any attention to the in-group diversity that one habitually finds in sociological surveys and statistics that classify results according to racial categories. ZZ Packer’s collection of short stories Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (2003) presents us with a set of mostly African-American female characters who, despite sharing the overt difference of their skin color, reveal a much wider range of “otherness” or alterity as they have to grapple with the boundaries that age, class, education, religion or family background mark out for them. The aim of this article is to show how Packer succeeds in transcending many of the age-old archetypes often used to analyze characters in texts by black women writers–e.g., the conjurer, the fallen woman, the freedom-fighter, etc. Los escritores pertenecientes a distintas minorías étnicas solo prestan atención en contadas ocasiones a la enorme diversidad que se observa en las estadísticas y estudios s...
Palabra/s clave
African-American literature
ZZ Packer
Short story
Social categories
Diversity
Archetypes and stereotypes
Literatura afro-americana
Relato corto
Categorías sociales
Diversidad
Arquetipos y estereotipos