The Circles I Move In: Short Stories

by Diane Lefer

These sharp-edged, uncompromising, often comic stories take on the daunting complexities of our much afflicted and logic-resistant world. From the multiracial streets of New York City to Mexican villages caught up in social change, here are people of our times in pursuit of human connection. Lefer's unusual range of characters includes a pornographer who wishes to comfort his disillusioned feminist wife; a veteran of the Mexican Revolution who watches a young teacher and her rival - a leftist guerrilla - compete to push their Mixe Indian village into modernity; and a young boy at a family gathering who listens to his relatives reminisce about popular television commercials. Lefer's contemporary characters blunder toward a vision, breaking them free from the limitations of imperfect societies and the too tight borders of their own lives.

178 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

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.