Lemon

Puerto Rican performance poet Lemon Anderson had a rough coming of age during the 1990s in a notorious NYC building known for its crack and heroin deals. With no parents to raise him (father and mother had drug problems, and the latter died of AIDS), Anderson's education was penal servitude at Rikers Island, where he was sent as a young man for a range of felonious acts. Laura Brownson and Beth Levison's documentary Lemon traces Anderson's miraculous self-rehabilitation through performance art and slam poetry. Early in his career, Anderson was featured on Russell Simmons's Def Poetry Jam, which was picked up for a Broadway run. But with the show's closing, Anderson was broke again, living in the Brooklyn projects with his wife, kids, and in-laws. Lemon ably depicts this ex-con's against-all-odds rise as a solo poet-performer in NYC's respected off-Broadway community, beginning with his one-man show County of Kings being performed for kids, before moving on to a run at the prestigious Public Theater, where his determined single-minded quest for recognition finally runs up against the politics and hard financial realities of the NYC theater world. But Anderson is a relentlessly positive force of nature, and his resilience in the face of constant hardship is both dramatic and inspirational. DVD extras include bonus performances, deleted scenes, and outtakes. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)