Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a story that touches upon multiple issues we still struggle with today. Stereotyping, identity, and race being a few. This story is about Dina the narrator, she is an African American woman and Yale student from Baltimore who struggles to get use to the university she attends. She is misunderstood and different from her school mates whom is alienated. A poor girl with food stamps and embarrassed of herself. A slip up in a game causes her psychiatric visits for a year her mental health not being well questionable at best. She bonds with a girl named Heidi and they become friends but Dina hears Heidi's declaration of loving woman. This leads to her struggle with her own sexuality.
Dr. Raeburn, her physiatrist would ask about her life as he asked about her parents she responded "my father was a dick and my mother seemed to like him" then Raeburn asked about her dad and she responded "I hate my father almost as much as I hate the word dad. So, you can assume her relationship with her father was bad right then and there. One Possible reason for her behavior and mental instability. She spoke of her mother dying slowly at the hospital due to kidney failure but that she believed her father drove her away in the ambulance to die. She
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Raeburn asks about a crush possibly a girl and she avoids it. Steers the conversation towards a boy with nice shoes when she was sixteen avoidances at its finest. Heidi and Dina took a shower sprayed each other down and Dina had the realization that maybe she loved Heidi. That maybe she loved her when she first met her. Once she heard Heidi's confession coming out though she had broken away distanced herself, having trouble with having heard her say