Kristin Scott

Many would be surprised at the unconventional and often dangerous roads that Lillian Faderman, a pioneer of gay and lesbian studies, navigated in order to become the esteemed academic icon she is today. Stumbling and fumbling along many unexpected twists and turns, Faderman takes us on her unrelenting journey in her new memoir, chronicling the tempestuous terrain of her early years with naked candor.

An illegitimate child born in the Bronx in 1940 to a guilt-ridden Jewish immigrant mother, Faderman's father never even acknowledges her as his child. Growing up "in the shadow of [her] mother's tragedy," Faderman pursues fantasies of becoming a movie star in order to save her mother from the slave labor of the sweat shops and the psychological agony her mother experiences from the guilt of having left her family in Latvia in 1923 where they eventually perished at the hands of Hitler's Holocaust.

After moving to Los Angeles in the late forties, Faderman dons many identities in her quest for her own, from the "little momzer" (bastard) that her landlady used to call her as a child, Lillian Foster (actress), Gigi Frost (pin-up girl), Mrs. Mark Letson (wife of a gay man, for the sake of her mother and aunt), and Mink Frost (Burlesque Queen) to that of Dr. Lillian Faderman, feminist, esteemed academic, writer, lesbian and mother. And though her mother and her beloved aunt, whom she affectionately calls, "My Rae," know or understand little of her life, Faderman writes tenderly of their unconditional love.

As Faderman carves her own path through the inflexible patriarchal world of the late twentieth century vis-à-vis her search for stardom and her eventual rise up the academic ladder of success, her story is told with a clear, honest and endearing voice and has all the delicious qualities of a fictional novel.

Lillian Faderman reads from "Naked in the Promised Land" at 5pm on February 23 at Women and Children First, 5233 North Clark, (773)769-9299.

Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir

By Lillian Faderman

Houghton Mifflin, $26, 356 pages

(2003-02-19)

Also by Kristin Scott

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In "Going with the Grain: A Wandering Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life," Susan Seligson travels all over the world gathering grains of truth about the historical, spiritual, and cultural significance of bread.
(2002-12-12)

Story Stew
Dorothy Allison's "Trash" is like an old-fashioned, gritty, down-home Southern meal. The meat of raw experience is the main course, and every morsel is rich with flavor.
(2002-10-23)

The greatest story never told
In a humanizing story of biblical proportions, Shlomo DuNour delivers a strange, critical, yet sympathetic take on the saga of mankind's creation through the eyes of a naïve and inquisitive angel named Adiel.
(2002-09-04)

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