Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer

A black, motherless loner tries to come to terms with her radically unfamiliar surroundings as a Yale freshman. 

14-year-old church girl Tia runs away to the big city.

A bright young man makes a last-ditch attempt to understand his loser father on the Million Man March in Washington DC.

At summer camp, an all-black Brownie troop decide to teach a troop of white Brownies a lesson for a racial insult they think they overheard.

Teeming with life, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a collection that explores what it is to be human.

Never neatly resolved, these provocative and unforgettable stories resonate with honesty and wry humour and introduce us to a major new talent.