1) What was the significance of the article?
2) Did Dina feel displaced in some way?
3) How did Dina deal with the problems in her life?
3 thoughts on “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”
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1) What was the significance of the article?
2) Did Dina feel displaced in some way?
3) How did Dina deal with the problems in her life?
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3. Dina dealt with her problems in her life by lying and avoiding them. Towards the end of the story we see that Dina avoids Heidi, after knowing she wasn’t ‘straight.’ Dina also lied to the psychiatrist, she didn’t want to admit her problems to him so she lied to make it seem as everything was good in her life.
2.) Dina felt diplaced in both ways: not having the comfort home one would usually have and also being a student at Yale University. Growing up and not having both parents present, forces Dina to live an unpleasant life where her options are limited. As a result, it is like her comfort home is taken away from her. Likewise, being a student at Yale University, Dina feels out of place in this “white, patriarchial system.” There are obvious differences, with her background being a black person, that point out to the fact that she struggles in maintaining her identity while being surroudned by white people. For example, Dr. Raeburn says that her survival mechanism is “Black living in a white world,” which represents accurately what Dina goes through while attending Yale. Her black background, in a sense, is being taken over with the white culture that surrounds her. As a result, she faces displacement.
1) The significance of this article is to show that not everyone immediately feels the sense of belonging in a community. Some people feel like outsiders and don’t feel like they could relate to anyone. In this reading, the author, ZZ Packer did a great job in writing in the perspective of a girl named Dina who didn’t feel like she fit into Yale. Dina felt this sense of displacement because of her race, economic background, and parentless upbringing. Overall, the article is supposed to show readers that they aren’t alone in this world and that many cope with these issues.