~Tiff~ edited the summary of Coffee Will Make You Black: A Novel Monday, January 17, 2011.
I still thought breasts mightStevie's dream is to be morepopular and cool, and her wish is granted when ``all the way cool'' Carla invites her to a party. Soon Stevie has had her first period, her first kiss (from sexy Yusef), and is learning that cool is not necessarily kind, for that dog Yusef has his classmates spy while the two show themselves to each other. All this is fresh and authentic. The trouble than they were worth. Growing up reminded mestarts with Stevie's arrival at high school, which coincides with the ``black is beautiful'' period (it's 1967). Here, the flow is disrupted by obvious setups intended to make points about race and sexual orientation. Stevie and Carla happen on their white art-teacher having a date with a little bitblack man--puppets miming the interracial experimentation of Hidethe period. At school, the sympathetic Nurse Horn puts Stevie in a quandary: Is it possible to be friends with a white woman, who may even be ``funny'' (lesbian)? The question overshadows Stevie's almost consummated relationship with Sean, a straight-arrow senior, and Go Seek. Whenalthough the good nurse answers it was your time to grow up, Nature said, "Here I come, ready or not." And Nature could always find you.in best Ann Landers style (``because you have a schoolgirl crush on me doesn't make you a homosexual''), Stevie ends up dwarfed by her author's agenda.
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