Notable Lesbians
This week’s Notable Lesbian is:
Lillian Faderman
1940 -
Lillian Faderman
is a scholar whose books on lesbian relationships in history have earned critical praise and awards including the Stonewall Book Award, the Lambda Literary Editor’s Choice Award, the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian/Gay Anthology and the Publishers Triangle Bill Whitehead Award. She is currently a professor of English at California State University. Faderman studied first at UCLA and later at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her partner of thirty years, Phyllis. They have one son, Avrom, who earned a PhD from Stanford University.
Interesting tid bit:
Faderman was raised by her mother, Mary, and her aunt, Rae. In 1923, the two emigrated from a shtetl in Latvia to the lower east side of Manhattan, hoping to marry well enough to pay for their sisters and brothers to join them in the United States. The plan was unsuccessful; the rest of the family were killed during Hitler’s extermination of European Jews. The family moved to Los Angeles, where with her mother’s encouragement Faderman took acting classes. She began modeling as a teenager, discovered the gay bar scene and met her first girlfriend. Before she graduated from high school, she married a gay man much older than herself, a marriage which lasted less than a year and was mainly done at the insistence of her mother and aunt.
If you have a suggestion for a Notable Lesbian, e-maill me at lyndsey.darcangelo@451press.net or use the contact form above and I’ll highlight her in an upcoming post.
lillian faderman, ucla, california state university, stanford university, notable lesbians, stonewall book award, lambda literary award, publishers triangle
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