![]() “Why did we have to be stuck at a camp with retarded girls? You know?” one girl asks. Worse, the presence of another disfavored group makes clear the reality of the Brownies’ own inferior position within the larger culture. The heartbreaking twist: the white scouts are mentally disabled, and the girl identified as the name-caller is discovered to be mute. How moving and convincing this is-that a group of African-American fourth graders would decide to contest the great powers by picking a fight against an unlikely and innocent enemy. The story tracks the Brownies’ halting, finally unsuccessful plans to take their revenge upon the white scouts. Certain members of the black scout group claim one of the white scouts has called them “nigger,” though it’s clear to the reader that this claim is dubious at best. Sometime around 1983, at Camp Crescendo- somewhere, we gather, in the vicinity of Atlanta-an all-black troop of Brownies encounters the all-white Troop 909. “Brownies” benefits from a brilliant and intrinsically interesting conceit. ![]() Caught at this gawky early moment, Packer shows herself to be what she has to this point remained: a writer of great and imperfectly fulfilled promise. ![]() ![]() Seen from this distance, “Brownies” is a youthful effort, in parts awkward and straining, elsewhere surprising, assured, and moving. ZZ Packer was just twenty-six when she published “Brownies” in Harper’s, part of a remarkable string of early successes that preceded her highly praised collection Drinking Coffee Elsewhere (Riverhead, 2003), still her only book in print. ![]()
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