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- W794512152 abstract "You should not read Annie Lanzillotto's L Is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir just to learn to catch a fly ball in oncoming traffic, or simply because it's the best tough-minded and deeply poetic prose I can remember reading since Hemingway--a voice, writes author John Gennari, richly soulful as her mother's lasagna and as bracingly unsentimental as her father's Marine masculinity. You should also not read it because it's the best depiction of a Bronx childhood since Kate Simon's Bronx Primitive. You should not read it because you're a New Yorker who wants to understand the impulse to freedom that defines the city, or to revel in a deeply sexual coming out story. You shouldn't read it just to learn how to cook a heart from a butcher at the Arthur Avenue market. You should not read it because it's the most heart-rending depiction of an abusive father suffering from post-traumatic stress after surviving Okinawa. Don't read it for the stories of a two-time cancer patient, the only one to survive her support group called Teenagers with Terminal Illness at Brown. You should also not read the book for its astonishing and often outrageous array of metaphors. To discover, for instance, Annie's father--who called her Daddy--handed her a bucket of batteries and taught her to find which ones had a charge with the tip of her tongue--which she puts to use years later with utter abandonment in her lesbian love affairs where tongue was sensitized to the salty sting of energy. Set all that side. You need to read this book because it's the most powerful depiction I have ever read of a human being can draw on her folk culture, her humor, and her poetic insight to pull life-affirming meaning out of the gutter like a lost Spaldeen. The Spaldeen is the New Yorkism for the ball that became ubiquitous on New York City streets and playgrounds, sold at the corner store and manufactured by the Spalding Company, from whence comes its mispronounced name. Playing Shirts against Skins on Zerega Street in the Bronx (and upset that she always had to be on the Shirts), Annie describes hid behind car wheels.... Spaldeens took on the smell of the street. Spaldeens sweated and got dirty. Spaldeens taught me soul; to find adventure, to fly, to roll, to hide, to float, to be buoyant, to bounce back even after you rolled down the sewer. At night, I'd wash my hands and face, and my Spaldeen. I scrubbed it in the sink with soapy water and a washcloth. It smelled clean, ready for the next day. I slept with it under my pillow. …" @default.
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- W794512152 date "2013-09-22" @default.
- W794512152 modified "2023-09-24" @default.
- W794512152 title "Annie's Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir" @default.
- W794512152 hasPublicationYear "2013" @default.
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