In a meeting with the psychiatrist, the doctor asks Dina about her sexual history. Many other examples occur throughout the story. This response, obviously meant to shock and discomfort her peers, earns Dina her psychiatric evaluations. Dina, disgusted by her classmate’s insipid choices, states that she would be a revolver. The game inspires creativity and helps the freshmen get to know each other.

For example, in the first few pages, during an exercise designed for incoming freshman, the students choose an object they would like to be. Because she has set herself up for this attitude it is a natural custom. Whenever someone asks her a question her response belittles and mystifies them. One of his most insightful statements is that Dina’s constant deceptions and dismissals have accustomed her to an offensive reaction. Order custom essay Drinking Coffee Elsewhere During her sessions with the school psychiatrist, his probing questions provide a window into some of the difficulties she has. The narrator in Drinking Coffee Elsewhere has many problems with communication that prevent her from forming healthy relationships. She takes some satisfaction from stereotyping others unfairly and irrationally, since stereotypes provide a simple and lazy detour around human interaction. It soon becomes apparent that Dina finds comfort in her intentional isolation. While her behavior is rude and obnoxious, they seem to be welcoming and sincere in their attempts to reconcile her depression. Only on rare occasions do we see her treated poorly by the other characters.

She seems to take pride in her jarring attitude toward authority and friendliness. The narrator deliberately isolates herself with off-hand comments and antisocial behavior. Of course, one must view these complaints with some skepticism. 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.įrom 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. The narrator of the story is a young woman named Dina who feels lonely and confused in her new surroundings. Among these are questions of race, identity, and stereotyping. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a very interesting story that brings up a number of thought-provoking issues in a relatively short format.

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