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 (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

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: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

One of those people who seems to pack several lifetimes into one, Faderman (literature & creative writing, California State Univ., Fresno; Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers) here presents her own life story. Born in 1940, the only child of a Jewish-immigrant single mother who was mentally unstable, Faderman was by turns a rebellious Pachuca teen in an East L.A. high school, an aspiring actress, and a pinup girl who eventually worked her way through Berkeley as a stripper. In the 1950s, she witnessed a lover being casually brutalized; 20 years later, as a groundbreaking academic and the author of Surpassing the Love of Men, a seminal queer studies text, Faderman developed one of the country's first women's studies and subsequently gay studies curricula from the safety and authority of a tenured administrative position. In 1979, she became a mother by alternative insemination. Black-and-white photographs document her astonishing trajectory and underline how far Faderman, as well as society in general, have come. A lesbian feminist Bildungsroman of wide appeal; recommended for all collections.-Ina Rimpau, Newark P.L., NJCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

As for so many other writers, a background of want and trauma proves a vine worth mining for Faderman, who compellingly recalls her uneducated, unwed, immigrant mother--toiling in a sweatshop, wracked with guilt over family members' deaths in the Holocaust, and prone to psychotic episodes, even during Rosh Hashanah services. From this you-and-me-against-the-world existence in New York, Rae, Faderman's maternal aunt, took her and her mother to East L.A., far from the father who persistently denied paternity. There, Faderman dreamed of becoming a movie star to free her mother from a life of unrequited love and drudgery. Rae married and left Lillie to grow up in the shadows of my mother's tragedy, but then a corner theater-arts school provided an outlet for her talent, and Irene, the object of her adolescent crush, awakened her desire for women. Despite some low-life experiences as an adult, Faderman eventually distinguished herself as a gay and lesbian studies scholar and, in this gripping memoir, as a superb writer. WhitneyScott. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Lillian Faderman teaches literature and creative writing at California State University at Fresno Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

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

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