At Johns Hopkins, one of her tutors was Francine Prose, whose perspective on writing encouraged Packer to look at her own work in a new way.Īfter Johns Hopkins, Packer taught in a public high school for two years, determined to write during her spare time. But after graduating from Yale, she attended the Writing Seminar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. At the time she did not think writing was an activity that people could actually do in order to make a living. For a while she was unsure of whether to focus on the humanities or the sciences, but she then decided she would become an engineer. During her early schooling, Packer was interested in math and science, but in high school a teacher had the class write short stories, and that planted a seed in Packer's mind that she might one day become a writer.Īfter graduating from high school, Packer attended Yale University. Then her parents got divorced, and ZZ went to live in Louisville, Kentucky, with her mother. Was five, she and her family moved to Atlanta, where she remained until she was eleven. Her first name is Zuwena, which is a Swahili word meaning "good." But she has been known by the nickname ZZ for as long as she can remember, she told Richard Dorment in a March 2003 interview for Interview magazine. As she tells the story, she comes to an unsettling realization about racism and the nature of human life. The African American girls discover that the situation is not as clear-cut as they had believed, and as they return home on the bus, Laurel, the African American girl who narrates the story, tells them of an incident in her family involving a white Mennonite family. "Brownies" is a story about racism as it is experienced by young girls, but it has a twist. The African American girls resolve to beat up the white girls. At the camp, they encounter a troop of white girls and believe that one of the white girls addressed them with a racial insult. The story is about a Brownie troop of fourth-grade African American girls from suburban Atlanta, Georgia, who go to summer camp. It appears in Packer's short story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which was published in 2003 to great acclaim.
"Brownies" is a story by ZZ Packer, a young African American writer.
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