Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir
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Faderman (literature and creative writing, California State U. at Fresno) recounts the story of her youth and early adulthood. Born to a Latvian immigrant whose entirely family had been murdered in the Holocaust, causing or exacerbating her mental illness, Faderman grew up in Hollywood nursing dreams of movie stardom. She instead found herself working as a burlesque stripper while she worked for her PhD. and a position as a professor, hiding the two worlds from each other and the fact that she was lesbian from both. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR 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. Agent, Sandy Dijkstra. (Feb. 12) Forecast: This should be popular among lesbian, Jewish and even general readers. Blurbs from Vivian Gornick and others, coupled with a national author tour, will get things going. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Contents Acknowledgments Vii I Lilly 1 How I Became an Overachiever 3 2 Going Crazy In East L.A. 24 3 Crushed 44 4 Men I 64 5 Shedding 87 II Lil 6 Hollywood 105 7 My Movie-Actress Nose 130 8 The Open Door 142 9 Getting the Gift of Wisdom 160 10 Kicked Out 173 11 A Jewish Prince 190 12 A Married Woman 207 III Lillian 13 Higher Education 227 14 How I Became a Burlesque Queen 247 15 Men II 267 16 Professor Faderman 286 17 How I Became a College Administrator 306 18 Sheaves of Oats 331 19 Epilogue 351
