Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Lillian Faderman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 2003

Born in 1940, Lillian Faderman was the only child of an uneducated and unmarried immigrant Jewish woman. Her mother, whose family perished in the Holocaust, was racked by guilt at having come to America and left them behind; she suffered recurrent psychotic episodes. Her only escape from the brutal labor of her sweatshop job was her fiercely loved daughter, Lilly, whose poignant dream throughout an impoverished childhood was to become a movie star and "rescue" her mother. Lilly grew up to become Lil, outwardly tough, inwardly innocent, hungry for love and success. A beautiful young woman who was learning that her deepest erotic and emotional connections were to women, she found herself in a dangerous but seductive lesbian underworld of addicts, pimps, and prostitutes. Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful and to redeem her mother's suffering, she entered the University of California at Berkeley and worked her way through college as a burlesque stripper. A brilliant student, she ultimately achieved a Ph.D. At last she became Lillian, the woman who in time became a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer, and a charismatic, groundbreaking scholar of gay and lesbian studies.
Told with wrenching immediacy and great power, this is an extraordinary memoir: the nakedly honest -- and very American -- story of an exceptional woman and her remarkable, unorthodox life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While Faderman (To Believe in Women) is well known as the foremother of gay and lesbian studies, few would suspect she was the illegitimate child of a guilt-obsessed single mother, that she tried to please her mom by becoming a movie star or that she worked her way through college as a pin-up girl. Faderman's mother and aunt left Latvia in 1923 to work in New York and send back money to their family. They did, but neither could save their loved ones from Hitler's Holocaust, which tormented Faderman's mother endlessly. Mother and daughter moved to Los Angeles, where they supported each other's fragile mental health with a single dream: Lillian could become a movie star. She took acting classes, suffered various crushes and even endured advances by her mother's suitors, all in a blind stumble to find herself, or at least to escape the burden of her mother's unhappiness. While a guidance counselor steered Lillian back to school, she still had to fumble her own way to a sexual identity. Pre-liberation, this meant cop hassles, job paranoia and fake marriages to gay men, as well as the usual broken hearts. Still, by the end, Faderman became a bigwig at Cal State, with a baby and a lover and a gay studies program. Exceedingly honest, endearing and profound, Faderman truly shows readers the distance she's traveled, from "little momzer" to esteemed academic.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

An award-winning scholar in gay/lesbian studies, Faderman recounts her early life as the only child of an unmarried Jewish woman whose family perished in the Holocaust.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (February 12, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618128751
• ISBN-13: 978-0618128754
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,198,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Lesbian

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A promise to expose a personal truth in all its nakedness, March 11, 2003

By 

Talia Carner "Author, Jerusalem Maiden, Puppe... (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Ms. Faderman's story could have been a riveting novel, except that the series of events would have stretched our incredulity for its bigger-than-life experiences that could only be believed in the real world, not in fiction.

Lillian goes through derivatives of her name as Lil or Lily, with each name representing a phase in her turbulent life. She tells the extraordinary story of growing as a very poor girl to an unwed mother who had made a series of very poor choices she lives to regret. These life changing decisions haunt not only the mother, who is given to bouts of depression and temporary loss of her faculties, but deeply affect her daughter's life and choices.

From struggling to become an talented actress with "a bad face, a good body," to become a sex model--at fourteen--to older men with cameras shooting her photographs for their private pleasure, Lillian's freefall is almost certain. But in a last moment stroke of realization--supported by an encouraging teacher--she returns to high school.

In years to come, as Lillian holds on by her teeth to her continuing education, she continues to make ends meet as a pin-up model. The minimum wage in the 50s and 60s in more conventional occupations is way below living wages. (The author saves herself no embarrassment as she peppers the book with actual photographs of her naked poses.) At the same time, never doubting her homosexual makeup, she falls in and out of relationships, most of which start great, last for a good while, then wither away. All the while Lillian puts out a semi-respectable front for the sake of her mother and aunt, including marrying a gay man and later dating a straight man.

Once she reaches adulthood and finishes her graduate studies, in a university campus she had never planned to stay for more than one school year, Dr. Faderman rises up the ranks and is given opportunities to develop one of the earliest women's studies programs in the county--and the first to celebrate gay writing.

A wonderful, riveting book that is highly recommended both for its fluid prose as for it story-telling of a remarkable life...

[...]

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting!, July 7, 2003

By 

Hot Mama "M" (Philly) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I finally snagged a copy of the book and did not put it down to do anything but eat and sleep. As a young lesbian who is not nearly thankful enough for her older lesbian sisters, I could not believe what Lillian went through in her life.
A few people have summarized the book, but I'll tell you what had me glued to the pages: Lillian's determination. She always succeeded whether she was trying to become a movie star, get better grades in high school, trick a strip club into believing she was famous (and therefore making more money), make her mother and aunt believe she was straight, get her PhD, move up the ranks at a university, come out as a lesbian and lesbian mom, and become a world-renown author.
She was a pioneer, believing in herself when there was no guarantee that she would succeed. She hoped for the best, worked hard, and managed to change higher education all over the country. Thank you, Lillian!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for any woman loving woman, June 21, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir (Hardcover)

An outstanding personal memoir and documentary of mid-twentieth century lesbian life. Faderman's autobiography is an essential accompaniment to her lesbian history books. As a young lesbian, this book has given me a much deeper insight into life "before Stonewall" and during the earliest stages of the gay rights and women's lib movements. The writing itself *glows* and is far more powerful than any novel that I have read in a long time. This book is an absolute must-read for any lesbian, and will be an enlightening journey for any reader, gay or straight or anywhere in between.