ZZ Packer started her career where many writers hope to end up: in the pages of Harper's and The New Yorker. The enviable talent that won her spots in these venues glows in her first book, a collection of short stories.

Packer's greatest talent lies in her remarkable ability to evoke feeling for and even intimacy with her characters. The title story features two highly intelligent female college students, both misfits, who warily circle each other throughout the course of the narrative. As they spiral closer and closer to each other, the tension increases. We learn the most about the protagonist, Dina, a young black woman and self-proclaimed misanthrope. A part of her manages to develop empathy for an overweight, suicidal white girl named Heidi.

They begin their dubious friendship by sparring over an incident in which Heidi co-opts lines from a Frank O'Hara poem. One day, Heidi puts her arm around Dina:

"Did you notice I put my arm around you?"

"Yes," (Dina says). "Next time, I'll have to chop it off."

But they become closer, working together as dishwashers at the cafeteria. A palpable question lingers: Will they become lovers? Dina's visits to the campus psychiatrist do nothing to resolve the question for the reader. The death of Heidi's mother escalates the need for an emotional connection between them and, finally, brings their relationship to a head - and the story to its eventual resolution.

In The Ant of the Self, an intelligent, black high school student named Spurgeon bails his errant father, Ray Bivens Jr., out of jail. Spurgeon's anxiety about the meeting is affirmed as he gets tangled up in his father's plan to sell exotic birds at the Million Man March. Within the course of 30 pages, Spurgeon introspectively contends with a blizzard of issues, ranging from the awkwardness of being a bright black boy in a predominantly white school, to the tense relationship between a straitlaced teenager and his alcoholic father, to the snap judgments strange black males make about him from their own self-righteous positions.

In one pivotal scene, Spurgeon stands alone in a crowd of people at the march. He holds his share of the exotic birds his father has directed him to sell. When challenged by a member of the crowd to show more enthusiasm for the speeches in progress, he replies with "My father made me come!" An angry crowd member retorts: "Made you come? Made you? This, my brother," he nearly yells, "is a day of atonement! You got to cut your father a little slack for caring for your sorry self!"

After enduring lectures from a host of crowd members and security guards, the boy is reunited with his father, just in time to trail him and his unsold birds into a bar. Packer preserves the poignancy of Spurgeon's predicament by resisting any expression of self-pity. She heightens the emotion by portraying the strength he must find in himself.

The other six stories in the book explore the interiors of their respective characters with equal intensity, as they navigate the murky waters of their lives, always against the backdrop of larger political, moral or spiritual issues.

The primary drawback readers will find in Packer's writing is the heavy emphasis on race in some stories. For example, the story Doris Is Coming recounts the moral and political struggles of a black girl in 1960s Louisville, Ky. Doris feels torn between her desire to abide by the wishes of her family and church leaders and her desire to participate in political demonstration against racial injustice. She finds even sympathetic characters show prejudice.

Racial injustice remains a hot enough issue to force the reader away from the essential struggle of the character and toward the emotions of politics. Her approach is strange, in light of her comments during an interview for a recent, online-only version of The New Yorker.

"Sensitivity aside," Packer said, "the impulse of an oppressed people to celebrate their leaders is necessary for politics but death for literature. . . . If you write to represent your community, you're writing propaganda. . . . The key, I think, is to write not as a member of your community but as an observer of it. I try to do this as much as possible, but it's very hard work. . . . I don't know whether or not I succeed at it, but I try."

Packer's efforts at writing as an observer of her community are admirable and exceptional. Readers can look forward to the works she produces when she takes further steps to shed political agendas and concentrate on stories, plain and simple. Expect wonders from Packer down the road.

Eric Blommel is a freelance writer living in Denver.