Reno Jewish Story Club Meeting
7:00 – 9:00 pm Monday, February 24, 2020
“Doris Is Coming” by ZZ Packer

It’s the early ’60s, a time of social upheaval. Martin King is making speeches that threaten segregation’s status quo. Kennedy becomes President and is assassinated. Governor Orval Faubus, who had ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block schoolhouse doors against blacks in 1957, is considered for Vice President on George Wallace’s third-party ticket after mainstream Democrats cut ties with avowed segregationists.

In 1962, the protagonist of our story, Doris Yates, learns what it takes to take a stand. Doris is the only black girl in her high school. She is befriended by another misfit… Jewish fellow student Olivia… who has her own car and whose house Doris’ mom cleans. Doris is also friendly with Lithuanian immigrant Stutz whose TV and appliance store in the black neighborhood can’t seem to sell any TVs. Doris gets more education outside school than in it.

Zuwena (ZZ) Packer had her first story published in 1992 at age 19 in Seventeen magazine. By 2000, when the New Yorker published the story that became the title of Packer’s first book, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”, she had completed a BA at Yale, an MA at Johns Hopkins, an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a Fellowship at Stanford. Packer grew up in Atlanta and Louisville but now resides in her birth city Chicago. She has used the past seventeen years to teach creative writing and fulfill writer-in-residence appointments at many universities around the US.

Discussion Leader: Alan Liebman

Host: the home of Mirey and Yakov Varol (south suburban Reno)

RSVP is REQUIRED to reserve your seat(s), receive a PDF copy of this month’s stories, and get travel directions, please e-mail your name(s) to RenoJewishStory@AmericanSuperior.org before sundown, THIS Friday (February 21st).

The Club can accommodate 20 attendees at this meeting. Social time and refreshments following discussion.

NEXT Club Meeting [mark your calendar!]: 7:00 – 9:00 pm Monday, March 23, 2020.