Lion Womans Legacy: An Armenian-American Memoir (The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series)
by Arlene Voski Avakian
Category: Biography & Autobiography

Â Â Â From its wry beginning on the steps on the Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church in New York City, 1954, Arlene Voski Avakian's memoir evokes the quarrels, ambition, prejudice, and courage that shaped her coming of age in a family that immigrated to the United States to escape genocide in Turkey. Inspired by her passionate feminism and strengthened by a loving lesbian relationship, Avakian records and re-examines her personal history, discovering in the story of her grandmother, the title's Lion Woman, powerful affirmation of ethnic identity and a richer, radical politics. Johnnetta Cole praises Avakian's "unusual perception about the lines that divide and the ties that bind women together."