Drinking Coffee Elsewhere Summary

Although society advocates believing in a ‘sameness’ between people who are black or white, individuals are still organized by race, class, gender and sexuality into social hierarchies. These hierarchies essentially formulate stigmas that suppress certain races and discriminate against them. Caucasia written by Danzy Senna is focused around a young mixed girl, Birdie, who encounters obstacles in her life that help her form her own perceptions about issues regarding class, race, and sexuality. These obstacles fundamentally shape her to have a unique outlook on society where she begins to question white privilege and also sympathize towards the mistreatment of black individuals. Senna explores the fundamental problems that are associated

This research discusses the many different ways of how society can influence identity. In the book the girl who fell from the sky by Heidi Durrow, it talks about a girl named Rachel Morse. Rachel Morse tries to put her tragic past behind her by keeping away her feelings. She goes to live with her grandmother. Rachel pretends to be a new girl after her mother killed herself and her siblings. As life starts to get hard for her, she remembers her father’s promise that he would come back and get her. The years passed and her father did not come which made Rachel gets more and more annihilate by the way she is judged based on the color of her skin. After Rachel started school in Portland, she became aware of being bi-racial. She believed

Each and every person on this Earth today has an identity. Over the years, each individual creates their identity through past experiences, family, race, and many other factors. Race, which continues to cause problems in today’s world, places individuals into certain categories. Based on their race, people are designated to be part of a larger, or group identity instead of being viewed as a person with a unique identity. Throughout Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard is on a search for his true identity. Throughout Black Boy, one can see that Richard’s racial background assigns him with a certain identity or a certain way in which some

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a very interesting story that brings up a number of thought-provoking issues in a relatively short format. Among these are questions of race, identity, and stereotyping. The narrator of the story is a young woman named Dina who feels lonely and confused in her new surroundings. As a poor, African American female at Yale (which the narrator portrays as a rich, male, and subtlety racist institution) she has difficulty adapting to the expectations of the university. From the very beginning, her differences set her apart from her classmates, until, from her point of view, she becomes a pariah, invisible and despised by the community. Of course, one must view

In the boiling pot of America most people have been asked “what are you?” when referring to one’s race or nationality. In the short story “Borders” by Thomas King he explores one of the many difficulties of living in a world that was stripped from his race. In a country that is as diverse as North America, culture and self-identity are hard to maintain. King’s short story “Borders” deals with a conflict that I have come to know well of. The mother in “Borders” is just in preserving her race and the background of her people. The mother manages to maintain her identity that many people lose from environmental pressure.

When a reader opens their textbook to Alexie’s story, they immediately perceive the sections that are broken up by grade levels. Having Alexie use this method helps the reader understand how each grade level affected him as a person. Each grade level specifies a problematic situation Alexie encountered. For example, in the ninth grade, Alexie passed out “after a basketball game in an overheated gym” (Alexie 323). Alexie was diagnosed with diabetes. However, when the Chicano teacher ran up to Alexie, he stated, “What’s the boy been drinking? I know all about these Indian Kids. They start drinking real young” (Alexie 323). Alexie’s ethnicity made the teacher assume that he was drunk. Making this type assumption conveyed an act of direct racism. For each grade level, Alexie ends his story with an opinion-based sentence. For the ninth grade, Alexie expresses, “Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers” (Alexie 323).

In the short story “Brownies,” author ZZ Packer uses the narrator, Laurel, to explore the tensions that exist between belonging to a community and maintaining individuality. While away at camp with her brownie troop, she finds herself torn between achieving group inclusion and sustaining her own individualism. Although the events of the short story occur at Camp Crescendo, Packer is able to expand (and parallel) this struggle for identity beyond the camp’s walls and into the racially segregated society that both the girls and their families come from. Packer is exploring how an individual’s inherent need for group inclusion consequently fuels segregation and prejudice against those outside the group across various social and societal

Mairs and Cofer both prove their point in the essay by sharing a few incidents and experiences with us. Throughout both these essays, we see the authors struggling and fighting against society to correct the labels that have been put on them. While Mairs is identified by her disease, Cofer is identified by her race.

In ZZ Packer’s book entitled Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, we get to see how African Americans cope with their different situations dealing with family, friendship, religion, and the pursuit of prosperity in the world. Within the short story collection there is a story named after the title, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, where we get to see the pressures put on a young African American woman, Dina, that causes her to resort to near complete isolation of herself. Dina says at one point, “We spent the winter and some of the spring in my room- never hers- missing tests, listening to music, looking out my window to comment on people who wouldn’t have given us a second thought”(Packer 140). Dina feels the need

Every red-blooded American male reaches a zenith in his life when he has finally joined the company of men, and been deemed worthy to receive a lifetime of collected wisdom and tutelage from his elder “packmates”. This knowledge comes in both lewd and often brutally honest sentiments that can induce feelings of excitement and unabashed shame, but regardless of the emotions evoked, it is a necessary rite of passage signifying a young man’s entrance into the world of his peers. This transformation and the hesitance involved is masterfully scripted in Junot Diaz’s “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”. The dialogue

Almost all teens experience some sort of an identity crisis. They struggle with finding a clearer sense of themselves. Arnold Spirit Jr., a 14-year-old reservation Indian, faces an identity crisis when he leaves his reservation to go to school in Reardan, a town inhibited by white people. To begin, Arnold moves between different settings, and when he does, there is a change in his identity. Moreover, there is a change in his character as he moves between cities. Finally, Arnold experiences an identity crisis as well as conflicts with his community. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the author uses literary elements to emphasize that one’s racial and ethnic identity changes depending on the social surrounding.

Note: This essay intends to explain the differences in first and third person narratives, highlighting examples within the two stories “Let them call it Jazz” and “A sense of shame”, both of which deal with racism and its subcultures in a first and third person perspective, respectively. The arguments presented are limited to that of first and third person perspectives only.

The following paper will discuss two of the major dimensions of my cultural identity, and analyze the way in which my identity holds privileges, or has exposed me to oppression. Being that I am white, I have lived a life of privilege simply because of the color of my skin. I have been afforded opportunities, and lived a life free from persecution due to my skin color. I have also lived a life that has been impacted by oppression because of my female identity. This unique position between privilege and oppression is where I live my life.

Coffee shops are well known as a place where you can get any types of coffee and related coffee beverages any time you want and need. Many coffee houses nowadays are serving also some food, snacks and desserts. Some of coffee shops turned into huge business and large companies like Starbucks.

First of all, Coffee-Mate´s main benefit is its ability to replace cream or real milk. Furthermore, it can be stored for a much longer time than milk or cream making it a good substitute. People who cannot drink coffee without milk don’t need to carry around or look for milk since coffee mate will do the same job. In addition it is made of health promoting ingredients such as dried glucose and vegetable fat. However it cannot be legally defined as non-diary since it also contains milk derivatives. This can be considered a benefit to Coffee-Mate when it comes to customers who like the flavour and thus also makes them use less sugar for sure. Another