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Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: Loss Of Innocence

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In Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, the major theme that develops is a loss of innocence. This loss of innocence is a common theme in many of the stories including Brownies, Our Lady of Peace, Speaking in Tongues, and Geese. In the first story Brownies, there is a troop of black girl scouts and a troop of white girl scouts going camping. The black girl scouts have always looked at the white girls as different, and were calling them names. “They smell like Chihuahuas.” At the beginning of the story, all the girls are still “little children” and innocent. This all changes when one of the white girls from troop 909 calls one of the black girls a nigger. When the black girls heard of this, they decided to seek revenge on the white girls. When the troop …show more content…

The main character Dina decided to travel to Japan for an escape from home. At the start of her trip, she decided to take a little “vacation” and enjoy herself in Japan. She then sold the return part of her plane ticket and went around exploring Japan and used up all her money. Dina and many other americans in a similar situation stayed at Ari's one room flat. She and her many roommate soon find themselves in a constant state of poverty and starvation. After arriving in Japan and living like this, she becomes disillusioned with the world and people around her. She becomes trapped in this foreign country with no way back home. She initially wanted to travel to Japan just for pleasure. “... she went to Japan for loveliness.” At the end of the story, she thinks about the Kamikaze pilots of World War 2, and how they would go on a one way trip with no return. She realizes that if she was given that same option now, she would have done something different. “She remembered how she'd marveled when she'd read it, amazed that anyone would do such a thing; how – in the all-knowing arrogance of youth – she'd been certain that given the same circumstances, she would have done something different.” The loss of innocence is shown because Dina is now aware of her own “Kamikaze mission” and how the viewpoint of others around her have

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She is going from her Ordinary World, a colony on a small planet named Kerenza towards the edge of the universe, to the spacecraft where she will be spending the entire rest of the war against BeiTech. In a debriefing interview, she later tells a member of the Ministry of the Interior United Terran Navy, “I was in class when it started. This is going to sound stupid, but I broke up with my boyfriend that morning, and he was right there on the other side of the room. I’m staring out the window and coming up with all the things I should say to the jerk, when these ships fly right overhead and all the windows start shaking” (2). Before her Hero’s Journey changes her, she is a typical teenage girl with a talent for hacking, worrying about school and the ex-boyfriend

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The main conflict in “Brownies” started when “Arnetta said she’d heard one of the Troop 909 girls call Daphne a ******” and wanted to get revenge (Packer). No one else could confirm that Arnetta’s accusation was true, and when Arnetta tried to get confirmation from Daphne, all she did was shrug. Even though there was no evidence that a girl had actually called Daphne the derogatory term, everyone joined in on the plan to get revenge, trusting Arnetta’s words. They eventually confronted the Troop 909 girls, but they quickly learned that some of the girls were echolalic, meaning “they will say whatever they hear, like an echo,” and that even if one of the girls did say the word, it was unintentional. The Brownies had created an elaborate plan to get revenge because of one girl’s words, only to find out that the situation was not what they had imagined it to be, therefore developing the theme that “There is often more to something than what meets the

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When she left her home she was fifteen years old, now she has become a young adult of a twenty year old. Where she has found a new island full of people and life from all over the world. Full of opportunities that she can look forward too. She can be anything she wanted, do whatever she pleased, whatever she dreamed without anyone tell her she can't do it. She will try to survive the conditions of this world while trying to reach her dream job which was being a musician and artist.

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2 Questions of “Brownies” 1. In the short story, “Brownies,” I would describe the narrator, whose name is Laurel, as a shy and timid girl, questioning the way people act. Most of the girls in her group do not take a liking to her, for she says, “[They] already decided their course of action, me being the only impediment” (Packer 847). Moreover, the narrator is very smart because she is skeptical, for she is the only one who questions the girls if they, in fact, heard troop 909 call one of the girls a nigger.

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The plot of the short story, “Brownies”, by ZZ Packer, is of a troop of young girl scouts who are of African American descent. The story depicts them attempting to brawl with another group due to the “brownie” troop assuming another called them a particular insult. Whether the other troop, Troop 909, in called the others a racial slur is left to ambiguity, although it is strongly suggested that they did not in fact refer to them in an invective manner. When the other troop is confronted about it, it is discovered that Troop 909 simply consisted of mentally disabled girls all in one group. Due to this, it is only fitting that the theme of the story was to indicate individuals with disadvantages in life should rejoice and unify rather than combat

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This fictional short story had a powerful meaning because it focused on how racial stereotyping can cause a lot of problems even among young girls who were attending a Girl Scouts camp. “Brownies” also showed how stereotyping can actually be harmful and can sometimes lead to hurtful consequences for the person who is the victim of it and for the person is guilty of stereotyping someone. I decided to do my analysis of this short story using the historical context element because of the long history of problems between the Black and White races in this country according to our history books, including one terrible incident that just happened one week ago when nine innocent Black people were murdered in a church in Charleston South Carolina by a 21 year old White racist who was guilty of stereotyping and hating Black people. The killer accused Black men of raping White women and that Black people were taking over the whole country. These were stereotypes that he first thought about in his head that then led to his terrible actions.

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Giving the impression that she purposely lives her life submerged from the rest of the world. Since it could be the first time Dina had someone revealing something so personal to her, in the original version, she realized that she might not be the person that she thinks she is, but it is clear that she is

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Therefore, the story had another twist, when African-American girls discover that the situation is not as clear as they thought. The Racial prejudice is visible in the history.

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(24) The United States and Japan were at war, and every Japanese person was being evacuated by the government to a concentration camp. Ruri and her family had to pack their bags and

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There had to be something more to this place than just unvaried barracks and dust! Yuki screamed inside her head as she tried to squeeze through the crowd of Japanese-Americans trying to find their new place of residence. Tears began to stream down Yuki’s face as she tried to get to get as far as she could from her cramped

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Laurel has a difficult time believing someone would have used the slur word especially the girl Arnetta points out, “ it is very unlikely this happy-looking girl would call anyone a “nigger” (Milne 2). Laurel also considers the fact that it may not be easy to fight Troop 909 since the girls may also fight back and may even deny saying the slur word. Considering other people’s perspective in a situation without blindly judging them shows.. . Laurel is thoughtful and empathetic towards people who are in difficult situations. When the girls hike to the restroom to scout the area, Daphne starts cleaning up the mess.

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Nella, another girl in the story, writes in her diary and reveals her horror when her new boyfriend, white man Doug, calls her children “jigaboos.” The alternate viewpoints shed light on

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The whole story has a bunch of racial tension in it which leads up to a huge fight at the bathrooms or so we thought. Another girl in the story named Arnetta is the girl that starts it all by saying the white girls called them names based on the color of their skin and that starts the whole dilemma of the 2 groups. Since the story is told by a girl in the African American group you really don't get another point of view from the girls in Troop 909. You only get a view from the other

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Winter was just around the corner. It was my first time in the biggest coffee shop in town. I could see the cheerful and brilliant lighting of the shop as I walked across the vast parking lot. There were tables outside the shop each with a brown vintage style umbrella. This particular coffee shop is not a cafe, it’s a coffee shop literally.

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