California Transit: Stories

by Diane Lefer

“From the world that could not be saved, the storyteller salvages small, strange stuff and assembles it into a narrative of alarming beauty and mystery and sadness.”—from the introduction by Carole Maso Southern land of dislocation and assimilation, a place Diane Lefer knows well. In California Transit, she uses conversational prose and macabre wit to zero-in on a Mexican woman detained indefinitely by immigration officials, isolating her from her American family; a zoo employee considering what to do with a euthanized antelope’s head; and, in the title novella, a lonely woman, riding buses all day, who cannot avert the violence building within her. This collection explores the difference between justice and law through a lens unfiltered by moralistic or didactic intention. Like a surveillance camera meant to record crime, not stop it, Lefer presents a world gone wrong, not because of people’s hatred for one another but because of their impossible, unfulfilled yearning to connect. Diane Lefer is the author of two previous collections, The Circles I Move In and Very Much Like Desire, and the novel Radiant Hunger. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is an artistic associate of Playwrights’ Arena, volunteers with the Program for Torture Victims, and serves on the animal behavior observation team of the research department at the Los Angeles Zoo. She teaches in the MFA writing program at Vermont College of the Union Institute & University.

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Though I dropped out of college decades ago, I ended up teaching for 23 years in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. But back in the day, I ran away to Oaxaca, Mexico where the people and place inspired many of the stories in The Circles I Move In. My love and respect for Latin America still guide me--most recently as Hector Aristizábal's co-author. The Blessing Next to the Wound is his story of surviving arrest, torture, drug cartel violence, and civil war in Colombia and how his past informs his activism here in the US and around the world. We also collaborated on Nightwind, a play about torture that has toured as far afield as Afghanistan. In July 2010, Hector performed it (at considerable risk) in Colombia for the first time while there for a month working with peace groups.

My own social justice work includes serving as Spanish-English volunteer legal assistant for immigrants in detention (a subject I address in a story in California Transit) and education and advocacy on behalf of kids in the juvenile in/justice system.

Would love to hear from anyone working in or interested in social justice. Or Latin America. Or animals. I'm an animal behavior observer with the research department of the LA Zoo. And when my friend, the great author François Camoin, accused me of having an unwholesome relationship with my cat, he inspired my musical, American Buggery, based on court records from colonial New England about men hanged for bestiality. It was produced by Trustus Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina and I wasn't even tarred and feathered and forced out of town -- though I was subsequently the object of amorous advances by a drill baboon at the zoo. As a proper behavioral observer I had been trained not to interact. Sorry, Lyle.

Reviews

[Rowan · Rating 2 out of 5]

almost done with this. the stories are interesting but i'm not crazy about this book. it's quite a downer. i think the only reason i keep reading is the fact that the writer is skilled with words and narrative. so it's a dilemma: reading a book i don't particularly enjoy.