Works by
Lillian Faderman
(Writer)

Writing

• Lesbians in Germany: 1890'S-1920's (1980, 1993) with Brigitte Eriksson

• Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (1981) -- Winner 1982 American Library Association Award for best lesbian/gay book.
  A classic of its kind, this fascinating cultural history draws on everything from private correspondence to pornography to explore five hundred years of friendship and love between women. Surpassing the Love of Men throws a new light on shifting theories of female sexuality and the changing status of women over the centuries.

• Scotch Verdict: Miss Pirie and Miss Woods V. Dame Cumming Gordon (1983)
  The true-life story of two 19th-century Scottish school mistresses accused of having a lesbian affair--the historical basis of Lillian Hellman's famous play, The Children's Hour.

• Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (1991) -- Winner, 1991 Lambda Literary Award's Editor's Choice Award; Winner 1992 American Library Association Award for best lesbian/gay book.

• I Begin My Life All Over : The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience (1998) with Ghia Xiong
  "This book, a mostly-oral history of Hmong refugees from the country of Laos, is a must-read for anyone interested the immigrant experience, or in the implications of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. Lillian Faderman, award-winning author of books on lesbian history and multiethnic studies, collaborates with a Hmong assistant, Ghia Xiong, to collect refugee stories of passage into American life. The book, divided between tales of survival and escape from the old world, and disorientation and upset in the new, is in turns harrowing and inspiring. Elder immigrants speak of the erosion of their traditions in the face of American culture, while the young talk of being pulled between love for their parents and a need to assimilate for their own survival. Here and there Faderman effectively draws parallels between the Hmong experience and the history of her own mother, a Jew who emigrated from Eastern Europe to America in the 1930s, and encourages readers to consider the story of their own ancestors' arrival into this country.

  Several photos in the book express the spirit of Hmong people and offer visual evidence of the conflicts they face. But it is Ghia Xiong, himself a Hmong refugee, who most eloquently speaks for the immigrant experience in his own brief afterword. Of the book's subjects, he says, "I felt that they also were lost in this enormous American jungle. As wise and determined as many of them were, they could not see their way to the light." Perhaps this book will inspire readers to help illuminate the path." --Maria Dolan, Amazon.com

• To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History (1999) -- Winner 1999 Lambda Literary Award for GLBT Studies (Lesbian Studies
  This landmark work of lesbian history focuses on how certain late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century women whose lives can be described as lesbian were in the forefront of the battle to secure the rights and privileges that large numbers of Americans enjoy today. Lillian Faderman persuasively argues that their lesbianism may in fact have facilitated their accomplishments. A book of impeccable research and compelling readability, TO BELIEVE IN WOMEN will be a source of enlightenment for all, and for many a singular source of pride.

• Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir (2003) -- Winner 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Autobiography/Memoir; 2004, Winner 2004 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for memoir.
  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.

• Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians (2006) with Stuart Timmons -- Winner 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Arts and Culture;  Co-Winner 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
  The exhortation to "Go West!" has always had a strong hold on the American imagination. But for the gays, lesbians, and transgendered people who have moved to L.A. over the past two centuries, the City of Angels has offered a special home--which, in turn, gave rise to one of the most influential gay cultures in the world.

  Drawing upon untouched archives of documents and photographs and over 200 new interviews, Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons chart L.A.'s unique gay history, from the first missionary encounters with Native American cross-gendered "two spirits" to cross-dressing frontier women in search of their fortunes; from the bohemian freedom of early Hollywood to the explosion of gay life during World War II to the underground radicalism sparked by the 1950s blacklist; from the 1960s gay liberation movement to the creation of gay marketing in the 1990s. Faderman and Timmons show how geography, economic opportunity, and a constant influx of new people created a city that was more compatible to gay life than any other in America. Combining broad historical scope with deftly wrought stories of real people, from the Hollywood sound stage to the barrio, Gay L.A. is American social history at its best.

• The Tree and the Vine (1996) by Barbara Tanner (Translator), Dola De Jong, and Ilona Kinzer with an introduction by Lillian Faderman

• Great Events From History: Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Trangender Events -- 1848-2006 (2006), Edited by Eric C. Wat, Horacio Roque Ramirez, Lillian Faderman, Stuart Timmons, and Yolanda Retter