Reading on the Ave Book Club: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

All are welcome to attend the Reading on the Avenue Book Club, which meets in the Community Room of Willow Glen Library. On Wednesday, July 25, we'll be discussing Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer.

ZZ Packer's impressive range and talent are abundantly evident in this debut book of stories.  She dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decide where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan who are starving, unable to find work; and a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby.