Packer’s detailed stories take students on an adventure
The Yale graduate dubbed herself “ZZ” after a long life of mispronunciations of her real name, Zuwena, and it lends a more lighthearted feel to her already amiable personality.
Every seat in every row of the auditorium quickly filled until there were only a few vacant rows in the back, as students piled in to hear an excerpt from “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.” Packer approached the podium with a warm smile and a worn copy of her book.
Her voice and gestures made the characters come alive and brought the audience into a time of segregation to see how it infiltrated the world of a few know-it-all fourth graders.
Packer then teased the audience with a cliffhanger of “Brownies,” enticing listeners to find out more from her book. She was not short of words when describing themes of her stories and the transition of writing short stories to writing novels.
“Short stories use lots of energy in short bursts. But with a novel, you have to be with it everyday. It’s really more like a marathon and kind of endurance not a short 100 meter dash,” Packer said.
In today’s world, many people don’t think twice about writing as a legitimate profession. For Packer, it took some time to realize that she could and would follow her passion successfully.
“As a child we, my family, would go to the library almost everyday and I would see these books on the shelves that just looked like they were meant to be there on their own,” Packer said. “It never occurred to me that someone had written them. To discover that people actually go through a process to write these books was amazing. When I actually did that process with my first book, a bell went off in my head and I realized that I might be able to really do this.”
With her realization, she made her passion a success. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” became a national best seller and a Pen/ Faulkner Finalist.
Throughout her short stories, an underlying theme of children learning about the world at their own pace and not through their parents’ eyes stands out. Packer addressed the crowd with a thoughtful response.
“You don’t become an adult unless you separate yourself from your parents. It begins a period of awareness. I think that’s where the world of story begins,” Packer said. “You are reacting to your environment or contributing to it somehow. All of that to me is very ripened and fertile ground for stories.”
Each story creates an original adventure. Her view of growth and personal revelations puts her characters in real situations in tough or compromising times. Packer’s vibrant language, rich in details, lets the reader escape to another time and place. In her stories, she smartly touches on racial boundaries and delves more into thought processes.
Every author creates a story with characters that come alive and guide the creator’s pen in the fluid flow of their lifespan. Packer reflects on her characters in different stories.
“At a certain point, when you’re writing, the characters begin to take on a life of their own. I think that’s why fiction is so enjoyable, because you get the chance to see another life and not just a replica of a life that’s already been lived,” Packer said.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 6 2009. Filed under Features.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
