Reviews

Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir by Lillian Faderman

bookish_smorgasbord's review

5.0

Lillian Faderman, author, is merely one aspect of the complex and fascinating woman that is Lillian Faderman. In her memoir, Naked in the Promised Land, Faderman explores the seeds of her identity as a small child in New York City to her trial by fire adolescence and young adulthood in East Los Angeles. Her mother and her aunt were the sole survivors, due to their immigration to the United States, of their family's destruction by the Nazis. Faderman struggled to realize their dreams, as well as find her own. The memoir follows her through rough periods of acting, modeling, relationships, and burlesque dancing. Supportive persons emerge along the way, helping her to eventually realize her academic dreams. The memoir is rich and does not shy away from all gradations of her person. I highly recommend it!

cam_pderby's review against another edition

adventurous challenging hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

5.0

sashanovik's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

shelleyanderson4127's review against another edition

adventurous funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

 The only child of an unmarried Jewish immigrant, Faderman was raised in poverty. She wanted to be a movie star, but instead was drawn as a teenager into Hollywood's shady sex trade. She grabs a chance to study at university, financing her studies by working as a pin-up model and burlesque dancer.

Faderman is now a respected professor and renowned scholar. If you've never read her works on lesbian history like Surpassing the Love of Men, or Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, you are in for a treat.

This memoir is clear, funny and powerful, and a loving tribute to her mother. Well worth a read. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism and Homophobia

library_lurker's review

5.0

what an underrated gem this book is! it's a beautifully-written memoir, about growing up queer and poor and jewish in the 1940's and 50's. i really felt like i was there with faderman, in the seedy gay bars and pinup photography studios, all the way to her tenured-professor, partner-and-a-baby life of the 70's and 80's. ms. faderman has made a career of keeping gay/lesbian history alive, and her own personal history is definitely worth reading too. i couldn't put it down!

susiedoom's review

4.0

I knew Lillian Faderman only by her research, after reading a couple of her books on lesbian history during grad school. I had no idea how interesting her background is! It's such a treasure to hear Faderman's story in her own words. Queer lives are so often erased or only analyzed through a modern lens. In this memoir, Faderman describes her experience growing up in 1940s/50s New York and L.A. as a young lesbian, and her journey from trying to be a child star to performing as a burlesque star to becoming the lesbian historian she's known as today. I really enjoyed her story; so much was unexpected, and so much is still relevant today. I do wish some of the language around race, ethnicity, and class had been updated in this 2020 edition. But beyond that, it's a really valuable text, and I'm grateful for the chance to read it. Especially with the foreword from Carmen Maria Machado - it's worth buying for that alone!