Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir

Description

This modern classic of LGBT writing includes an introduction from Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties, and a new afterword from Lillian Faderman. Born in 1940, Lillian Faderman is the only child of an uneducated and unmarried Jewish woman who left Latvia to seek a better life in America. Lillian grew up in poverty, but fantasised about becoming an actress. When her dreams led to the dangerous, seductive world of the sex trade and sham-marriages in Hollywood of the fifties, she realised she was attracted to women, and that show-biz is as cruel as they say. Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful, she studied at Berkeley; paying her way by working as a pin-up model and burlesque dancer, hiding her lesbian affairs from the outside world. At last she became a brilliant student and the woman who becomes a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer and ground-breaking pioneer of gay and lesbian scholarship. Told with wrenching immediacy and great power, Naked in the Promised Land is the story of an exceptional woman and her remarkable, unorthodox life.

Lillian Faderman is an internationally-known scholar of lesbian history and literature, as well as ethnic history and literature. Her many honours include six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship. She is the author of Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death, The Gay Revolution, Surpassing the Love of Men, and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.

Lillian Faderman's portrait of her mother and aunt, lone survivors of their slaughtered family, who have come to America laden with hope, is full of tenderness and candor and sharp, often hilarious wit. It is her unsparing portrait of herself, however, that makes this book so riveting. She is serious and ambitious, loving and stubborn. She is ready to risk everything for knowledge. She also writes beautiful sentences, and her book is likely to become a classic self-portrait in a time of change in America -- Colm Toibin A startling, dark, and wryly eloquent retelling of the American Dream. Who'd have thought a professor's life could be such a gripping page-turner? -- Emma Donoghue, author of ROOM and SLAMMERKIN How one woman used her good looks to land the girl of her dreams, and found a career where she could use her brains instead of her breasts. Today Lillian Faderman is a distinguished academic; her early days among Holocaust-scarred relatives and lesbian pimps on Sunset Strip are a testament to a personal vision in the face of historical struggle -- Sarah Schulman, author of THE COSMOPOLITANS, RAT BOHEMIANS and MY AMERICAN HISTORY A remarkable tale of emergence, bold and exciting, and wonderfully told -- Vivian Gornick, author of FIERCE ATTACHMENTS This riveting autobiography is vivid, honest, generous, compassionate, and sensuous all at once. Its strength lies in its understanding of historical moments that are important to all women and its ability to make them come alive in a very personal way for each one of us -- Chitra Divakaruni, author of THE VINE OF DESIRE and THE UNKNOWN ERRORS OF OUR LIVES An incredible memoir of a damaged mother and her observant daughter. Lillian Faderman has written with an amazing voice, a clear-eyed view, and wisdom on how we both save and surmount the past. Hers is a life that is truly worth recording and sharing with all of us. The photos alone are worth the price of admission. -- Amy Tan, author of THE VALLEY OF AMAZEMENT, THE BONESETTER'S DAUGHTER and THE JOY LUCK CLUB