Lion Woman's Legacy: An Armenian-American Memoir

by Arlene Voski Avakian, Bettina Aptheker (Afterword)

Overview

Arlene 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 within a loving lesbian relationship, Avakian records and re-examines her personal history, discovering the story of her grandmother, which brings with it a legacy of radical politics and a powerful affirmation of ethnic identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558610521
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	01/01/1993
Series:	Cross-Cultural Memoir Series
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

Editorial Reviews

Now in her 50s, Avakian belongs to the generation of young women who embraced feminism as the so-called second wave swelled. Her account of a determinedly middle-class childhood, college years in which she turned away from clothes, boys, and sorority activities to embrace ideas and activism, and an early marriage and unplanned maternity could belong to many of us. What is unique here is her slowly emerging ethnic identity and understanding of herself as the child of genocide survivors. Unfortunately, this is not well woven into the narrative, and the book ends before we can sense that the author has integrated the lessons of the Lion Woman (Avakian's grandmother; so named because she saved her child from genocide) into her life. Nevertheless, this extremely readable and often painfully honest book belongs in women's and ethnic studies collections, where the context provided by the somewhat pretentious afterword can be utilized by later writers on the Armenian American experience.--Beverly Miller, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.

Library Journal

"Arlene Avakian is unusually perceptive about the lines that divide, no less than the ties that bind women together. As Avakian tells her story, she also tells that of her Armenian sisters and indeed the story of so many of us womenfolks."
— Johnnetta B. Cole, former president of Spelman College

" Lion Woman's Legacy is a deeply moving, from-the-inside story of growing up as an Armenian-American woman in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. This tale of ethnicity—recollecting a holocaust nearly unknown outside Armenia—fully integrates race and class in its profound understanding of two worlds."
— Margaret Randall, author of Walking to the Edge: Essays of Resistance

"An exhilarating, often excruciating record of a woman's struggle for self-discovery and liberation, this remarkable odyssey of a second-generation Armenian woman is told with a novelist's skill, reminding us that America still needs people of vision and determination."
— Leo Hamalian, editor of Ararat

From the Publisher