L Is for Lion

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is a poet and performance artist living in New York. She teaches master classes in solo performance for the Acting Apprentice Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is the author of a book of poetry, Schistsong.

• Prologue: The Blue SuitcasePart One: Bronx Tomboy Eat with Guys You TrustBreakfast Is to Coat the StomachThe XStoopThe Return of the RustA Good EaterThe Tin CeilingSidewalkLicking BatteriesTeaspoons and HeatpipesKitchen BirdKindergarten, Boot Camp: 1968Sister RosariaQuicksandLasagna VowsRavioli, Homing Pigeons, and Teletype MachinesGrandpop, the Hook, and the EyebrowMade of RubberSister GiuseppinaSister ErcolinaPlaying WarLead Pipe, Montezuma, IcicleHand to HandThe Return of the LasagnaStreetHow to Catch a Flyball in Oncoming TrafficThe Names of HorsesRook to Queen FourBurning Rubber and PenmanshipTrestles and LoveSilence, ViolenceThe Blue AngelBronx County Family CourthouseParkchester Poseidon AdventureThe Lady in BlackFast BreakPart Two: Educationa Girl The Temporary ApartmentPermanent WaveUseless ExpertiseHunger Beat AgidaSistermazioneWalk Softly but Carry a Big PockabookLunch Is to Clean the BloodSlow, Loud, and ClearAsthma, Green Money, and the FeastBrakemanOutfield GreensMy Mother, the PlaintoffAunt Patty’s BullfightYou’re Just Like Your FatherJunkie PrideMary PerryCollege EntranceStrike OneFontanelle AureliusThe Miracle Worker of 233rd StreetPart Three: Kimosabe The Best Place to Have CancerRoom 621Shake ‘n BakeThe FastigiumDope and DemerolThe PipelineTruckstop ParanoiaChemistryAmaraBrazil Upside DownBelly UpOverheatingTriple Boiling PointEat ‘Til You SweatThe Tumor BoardThe Radioactive Man Says, "Don’t Give Up the Ship!"ThoracotomyOne Mis-sip-piMagnetic LaceLesbianism, Suicide, or the NunneryHow to Wake Up a Marine in a FoxholeRed DeathInterventionsFalling and FlyingCivilian Life SucksDeep BellPart Four: How to Cook a Heart Wallid Walla BintEquator CrossingsBronx Italian Butch FreedomNever Come Out in a Lincoln ContinentalA Nightclub Named Devotion "Roma o Morte!"Vrrooooom!"Cosa Mangia Oggi!"My Mother’s Aortaa’SchapettShave My HeadEnter Audrey Lauren KindredRachele’s Pocketbook FritattaHow to Poke a Guy’s Eyes OutHow to Cook a HeartPart Five: Annie’s Parts Mr. FixitSix Places to Buy MilkMy Father, Marconi, and MeSciamannin’Horizontal PeopleRadioactive FeastLimoncello and the Black BraGarlic, the Ave Maria, and the Blue LegCittadinanzaAssassination FocacciaSpearmint Gum CureOne Day My Horse Will Come InMadeleine and the Magic BiscottiHow GrammaRose Became a Peach TreeFruttificareThe Lasagna Stands AloneThree Days from EternityDon’t Make ‘Em BurnPipe DreamsThe Little Fish and the Big OceanThree Hundred Cream Puffs and the Illusion VeilLingua MadreSì o No?A Couple of Teaspoons of Coffee and a Couple of Drops of MilkBecoming GrammaRose Peach TreeGlossaryAcknowledgments: Exquisite PleasureCreditsAuthor’s Page

"L Is for Lion is a tour de force of voice, storytelling ability, and sheer capaciousness—the book has been reviewed as an Italian, lesbian, New York, illness, and social class memoir—all of which it encompasses, like an intricate set of Italian stained glass windows." — Italian Americana"…a truly inspirational story that takes us beyond gender, beyond sexual persuasion, and into the humanity that defines us all … Annie's is a liberating story, not only in what happens to her, but in the way she tells it … L Is for Lion is an extraordinary telling of ordinary experiences in the life of a Bronx Butch." — Fra Noi"You need to read this book because it's the most powerful depiction I have ever read of how 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 … L Is for Lion is a luscious lasagna pulled from the hot stove that binds us together as human beings." — Steve Zeitlin, City Lore"Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is a vividly talented writer whose coming of age story as a Bronx Italian lesbian creates a superb memoir. Rollicking with detail, poetic in language L Is for Lion is the book you read while walking through the house or out to your mailbox, just not wanting to pause even a moment." — San Francisco Book Review"This sprawling narrative could be called an Italian memoir, a Bronx memoir, a cancer memoir, a veteran father memoir, a 1960s childhood memoir, a mother-daughter memoir, or a lesbian memoir. In an ambitious display of storytelling, Lanzillotto's charming collection of vignettes encompasses all of these identities at once … L Is for Lion comes across like a bright, entertaining friend who tells the best stories—the kind you never forget." — Lambda Literary"If you want to know what it means to be a real human being, read Annie Lanzillotto's memoir, L Is for Lion, the title delivered to her directly in a dream from her dead father. As its subtitle implies, the book is a lesbian coming-of-age story, but like Whitman before her, Annie is vast; she contains multitudes. In spite of the privation and scarcity that have always dogged her, she lives out of abundance. You will love this lion as I do, and she will make you roar." — Jean Feraca, author of I Hear Voices: A Memoir of Love, Death, and the Radio"Annie's adventures as a Bronx-born tomboy are one-of-a-kind. The writing is exuberant and lyrical; the characterization masterful. Told with pathos, wit, and unflagging energy. If you're looking for a memoir in high-definition surround sound, look no further." — Margaux Fragoso, author of Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir"Annie Lanzillotto, the bard of Bronx Italian butch, is an American original, a performance artist and cultural anthropologist whose work is unique in theme, sound, affect, and effect. This memoir reveals her to be something more: an astonishing writer possessed of an utterly inimitable voice, a voice at once as richly soulful as her mother's lasagna and as bracingly unsentimental as her father's Marine masculinity. Lanzillotto's stories bounce and stretch with the elasticity of her trusted Spaldeen, keeping us just a step ahead of the flying emotional shrapnel of an intensely lived life as we move from the mean streets of 1970s Bronx to the Ivy League, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering cancer ward, the banks of the Nile, and the Italian mezzogiorno. A landmark of ethnic expressivity, L Is for Lion indelibly portrays the iconic Italian American spaces of kitchen, stoop, sidewalk, and street; the body as a site of humor and tragedy; and, above all, the family war zone as an uncanny intermingle of poignancy and brutality." — John Gennari, author of Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics"L Is for Lion is a book about a girl named 'Daddy' who goes to Brown but never leaves the Bronx. This long-awaited memoir by lesbian storyteller and performance artist Annie Lanzillotto traverses the distance from Arthur Avenue to Cairo to Sloan-Kettering and back again in an ethnography of the self and of an era. It's a book made of dismantled padlocks, and of doors, opened and closed; of spoons clanking against radiators in an attempt to speak or scream; of Ivy League classism and World War II racism; of language 'spoken and broken.' Equal parts humor, guts, and grief, it's a disarming story of all that a person—body, mind, and soul—can undergo without going under, in which 'Bronxite' is a new kind of rock." — Mary Cappello, author of Awkward: A Detour and Called Back