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.

Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Lillian Faderman

Community & Culture

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Amy Lowell’s contemporaries, writing at a time when lesbians were invisible, described her as an old maid. But as Lillian Faderman argues, Lowell wrote “some of the most remarkable, barely encoded, lesbian poems since Sappho,” while living in a Boston marriage with her muse, Ada Dwyer Russell. Lady of the Moon offers a combination of three voices on the Boston marriage of Amy Lowell and Ada Dwyer Russell. The first part contains a selection of Lowell’s love poems to Ada. The second part contains a scholarly essay by Lillian Faderman that analyzes these poems in relation to Lowell’s life. The third part contains a 27-sonnet sequence by Mary Meriam which draws from the first two parts and supports the story with imaginative details. In this jewel of a volume, a great love is reanimated. Imagist Amy Lowell’s love poems to actress Ada Russell, pioneering lesbian-feminist scholar Lillian Faderman’s landmark essay on Lowell and Russell, and contemporary poet Mary Meriam’s heartfelt sonnet sequence speaking to Russell in Lowell’s voice, combine to create a remarkable erotic and poetic event. Like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Lowell and Russell had a great creative partnership that made an indelible mark on literary and lesbian history. Lowell called her “tense and urgent love” for Russell an “amethyst garden;” today’s readers will find gems of all colors in Lady of the Moon. —Lisa L. Moore, author of Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes (Lambda Literary Award, 2012), and Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, The University of Texas at Austin What an erotic trinity! Amy Lowell’s fiery poems about Ada Dwyer Russell; Lillian Faderman’s illuminating essay about the couple and their “Boston marriage”; and Mary Meriam’s contemporary poems in Lowell’s lustful voice. Forget “Amygism” and “Patterns”: with this brilliantly edited selection of works by and about Amy Lowell, Mary Meriam restores Lowell to her rightful status as a groundbreaking feminist poet. —Julie Kane, National Poetry Series winner and recent Louisiana Poet Laureate Mary Meriam writes as Amy Lowell and her beloved Ada. She imagines, in a variety of sonnet forms, the richness that Lowell removed from her own love poems. While making use of Lowell’s language, the sonnets’ insistence on the psychological fullness of the two women and their relationship unsettles the century-old sounds so that a sense of quaint mimicry falls quickly by the wayside. The organization of the volume’s three parts is astute, though, finally, these sonnets cohere into a whole of their own. —Marcia Karp, poet and translator

Lady of the Moon

Literature & Fiction

Amy, Lowell

Mary Meriam

Poetry

Headmistress Press

A groundbreaking reappraisal of women who are known by history but whose histories are incomplete. Examines how their lesbianism may in fact have facilitated their accomplishments. Persuasively argues that even before a lesbian identity was defined, many female leaders had lesbian relationships, free from the constraints of traditional heterosexual arrangements, which might have impeded their pursuits in education, politics, culture, &amp; professional life. The book has received many awards, including the Lambda Literary Editors Choice Award; Best Lesbian/Gay Book of the Year, ALA s Social Responsibilities Task Force; &amp; a New York Times Notable Book &amp; Editor s Choice.

To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America -- A History

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Houghton, Mifflin Co.

Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Imprint unknown

Spine and cover creased, foxing to the tanned page edges, owner's inscription. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Surpassing the Love of Men

Quality Paperback Book Club

My Mother's Wars

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio

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Books by Lillian Faderman