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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 (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

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

Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.