Lillian Faderman

Photo by Phyllis Irwin
Lillian Faderman is an internationally known scholar of lesbian and LGBT history and literature, as well as ethnic history and literature.

Kirkus Reviews named WOMAN: THE AMERICAN HISTORY OF AN IDEA one of Best U.S. History Books of 2022.

The Nation named HARVEY MILK: HIS LIVES AND DEATH Most Valuable Biography of 2018.

The New York Times named three of her books on its "Notable Books of the Year" list:
SURPASSING THE LOVE OF MEN
ODD GIRLS AND TWILIGHT LOVERS
THE GAY REVOLUTION

The Guardian named ODD GIRLS AND TWILIGHT LOVERS one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History.

The Guardian interviewed Sarah Waters, who named SURPASSING THE LOVE OF MEN as her most formative book. 

The Guardian named THE GAY REVOLUTION one of the Six Top Books of LGBT Life.

Fortune named THE GAY REVOLUTION one of the 10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States.

Faderman's work has been translated into numerous languages, including German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Czech, and Slovenian. Among her many honors are six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship, including Yale University's James Brudner Award, the Monette/Horwitz Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, the Golden Crown Literary Society Trailblazer Award, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Culture Hero Award, and the American Association of University Women's Distinguished Senior Scholar Award.

WOMAN




Amazon
Yale University Press

INTERVIEWS
New Books Network
San Diego Union Tribune

HONORS
Named one of Best U.S. History Books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews

REVIEWS
Kirkus* “An intelligently provocative, vital reading experience. . . . This highly readable, inclusive, and deeply researched book will appeal to scholars of women and gender studies as well as anyone seeking to understand the historical patterns that misogyny has etched across every era of American culture.”

Alexandra Jacobs, New York Times “Exhaustively researched and finely written”

Barbara Spindel, Christian Science Monitor “The author’s impressive array of examples amply prove her central point, that oppressive ‘formulations of the idea of woman – notwithstanding some modifications here and there – kept a tyrannical hold in America for four hundred years.’”

Publishers Weekly “A comprehensive and lucid overview of the ongoing campaign to free women from ‘the tyranny of old notions.’”

Kathi Wolfe, Washington Blade “Fascinating. . . . Few books are timelier than Woman. . . . Will be a rite of passage for generations of LGBTQ folk.

BLURBS
“Lillian Faderman’s is a book many of us have been waiting for, the first comprehensive history of American women to capture the rich discoveries that have been made over the last half century, juxtaposing the abstraction of ‘woman’ with the range, resilience, and resistance of real women.”
—Ellen Carol DuBois, author of Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote

“A rewarding read. Pioneering scholar Lillian Faderman illuminates how concepts of female difference and inferiority stubbornly persist and captures the ongoing struggles of women to free themselves from the idea of ‘woman.’”
—Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania

“A sweeping history of conceptions of women by themselves and others told through fascinating stories that get the reader to turn the page.”
—Claudia Goldin, author of Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity

“A wide-ranging, deeply researched, and very well written survey of how the idea of woman has been deployed over more than three centuries of American history.”
—Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote

“With dazzling scholarship and monumental vision Faderman has, with illuminating detail and persuasive argument, brilliantly woven a rich tapestry of how the American ‘woman’ has been created and re-created over centuries.”
—Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States


Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death


Amazon
Yale University Press, Jewish Lives

INTERVIEWS
Chronicle of Higher Education
KALW San Francisco Public Radio

HONORS
Named Most Valuable Biography of 2018 by The Nation
Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award
Included in Wiki's Compelling Books That Offer Fresh Perspectives on American History

 REVIEWS
Kirkus* "Faderman does a fantastic job at reanimating a story that reminds us that people can be truly tolerant—with the exception of the few—and that, with will (not money), anyone can effect change. Harvey Milk as seen through fresh, highly knowledgeable eyes."

San Francisco Chronicle "A stirring account.... Faderman succeeds in painting a multifaceted portrait of a complicated man, in less than 300 pages. Milk was a famously exuberant, theatrical figure, but anyone relating his story needn’t be as effusive as he was: Faderman elicits the drama of his life dispassionately, and with understatement."

Tablet "elegantly written and well-researched"

Washington Post "Harnessing her perspective as a lesbian scholar and Jew born in New York City just a decade after Milk, Faderman’s sensitive contextualization of his life illuminates that his great humanity, as well as his successes and failures, were very much entwined with his Jewish identity."

Jewish Chronicle “Lillian Faderman has particularly interesting things to say about three themes: Milk’s Jewish background, his populist politics, and his death.”—Alan David, Jewish Chronicle

Times of Israel "A hopeful, moving, and uplifting read. . . Faderman’s narrative mixes the personal and the political with great skill; subtly displaying how at a fundamental level, fighting for collective political rights is really just a human yearning for personal happiness, which usually has its roots in compassion.”


PODCASTS & TV
C-Span Book TV with Cleve Jones at Mechanics' Institute

BLURB
"Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Lillian Faderman’s Harvey Milk is a revelation. This insightful work provides context to Milk’s life as a gay icon and illuminates how his experience was deeply informed by his own Jewish identity."
—Cleve Jones, author of When We Rise: My Life in the Movement

The Gay Revolution

Simon & Schuster

HONORS
New York Times Notable Book of 2015
Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2015
American Library Association Notable Book of the Year
The Guardian: Six Top Books of LGBT Life
Fortune: 10 books on American history that actually reflect the United States

AWARDS
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Stonewall Honor Book

REVIEWS
The Washington Post "This is the history of the gay and lesbian movement that we’ve been waiting for: compulsively readable, carefully anchored in the historical record, overflowing with riveting stories, human peculiarities and thoughtful analysis of the messy political contradictions that dogged this untidy movement. Other books have purported to explain how the unruly LGBT movement triumphed. THE GAY REVOLUTION succeeds."

The New York Times "To read her is like viewing the AIDS quilt, which overwhelms the viewer with the care taken in each of its numberless panels. Any revolutionary would be lucky to stand in a light so steady, so searching, and so sure."

The Economist "Ms Faderman has ably drawn the map that future historians of the struggle will use to chart their courses."

Huffington Post "The Gay Revolution is a cogent, definitive history of the movement and a towering achievement by Lillian Faderman. It belongs in every GLBTQ home, definitely available in every public school library and sent to every homophobic politician in Washington."

Kirkus* "Inspiring and necessary reading for all Americans interested in social justice."

Publishers Weekly "Faderman’s immense cultural history will give today’s LGBTQ activists both a profound appreciation of their forebears and the motivation to carry the struggle forward."

Library Journal*  "...this volume will deservedly become a standard in the field."




"This book is destined to be one of the lasting contributions to the literature of the gay rights movement."





Lambda Literary "...monumental scholarship. A must read."

The Advocate: "...the most honest, compelling history of our movement."

The American Prospect "The Gay Revolution will equip readers with a greater knowledge of the movement’s history, and an appreciation for the crucial role of individual acts of courage in winning and safeguarding equality. And it’s a great read."



PODCASTS & TV
C-Span Book TV at Book Passage Bookstore
C-Span Book TV with Jim Obergefell & Amy Nutt at Tucson Festival of Books
C-Span Book TV Call-In, Tucson Festival of Books
Los Angeles Public Library ALOUD
Slate
Huffington Post TV

With Robbie Kaplan at ALOUD
BLURBS
"I am large, I contain multitudes," sang Whitman, and it's the unprecedented compiling of multitudes of individual stories, journeys, acts of courage, stands of defiance, failures, and advances that distinguishes Faderman's sweeping history of transformation. So many people over so many years, each doing their part and propelling forward the epic change that has turned a despised and often hidden minority into a visible and triumphant engine of America's civil rights promise, claiming the vocabulary of love and marriage and freedom.
–Evan Wolfson, pioneering advocate of same-sex marriage and founder of Freedom to Marry

The Gay Revolution fills a yawning gap in history literature, providing readers for the first time with a history of the entire LGBT civil rights movement, from its inception in 1950 up through the current day.  The arrival of this new work is timely, coming just as our country seems poised to recognize the events Faderman recounts as legitimate and important American history. Anyone who reads Faderman’s passionate narrative will recognize it as a story that ennobles the human spirit and upholds the democratic ideals at the heart of this country’s founding documents.
–David Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution

Signing books in LA
The Gay Revolution is an extraordinarily well-documented and thorough back history of how gay equality is moving toward reality. Unless you were there in the 1950s and 60s you might think that the Stonewall riots occurred spontaneously. Instead, The Gay Revolution documents the momentous effort to decriminalize homosexuality and humanize homosexuals. There were gay warriors rattling swords long before gays were allowed to serve in the military. There were fledgling organizations created to unite the gay community for the common effort of equality. This book describes our collective history, which was not a homogenous effort but amazingly has moved us toward marriage equality and social justice.
–Colonel (ret) Margarethe Cammermeyer,  highest ranking officer to challenge the military’s anti-gay policy

Lillian Faderman has delivered the comprehensive account of one of the most extraordinary social movements in modern history. As gay people approach equality under the law, Faderman charts the course that brought such remarkable change so swiftly. It's a dynamic book that matches the power of the movement it describes.
–Cleve Jones, founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

The Gay Revolution is the definitive history of the gay rights movement in America. This book will play with your emotions as Lillian Faderman takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of the victories and sacrifice made by the LGBT community and its allies to arrive at this point in time. This is the story of civil rights for the 21st century!
–Reverend Troy D Perry, Founder of the LGBT Metropolitan Community Churches



Lillian Faderman once again shows why she is the definitive voice for gay and lesbian history. This book is a "must read" for anyone who wants to know the stories behind the brave faces that have created a new civil rights movement.
–Brigadier General Tammy Smith, first openly gay military flag officer

The Gay Revolution will be the standard by which all subsequent histories are measured. The fact that it is written in clear English is in itself a cause for celebration.
–Rita Mae Brown, author and lesbian activist

My Mother's Wars

Beacon Press

INTERVIEWS
National Endowment for the Arts
Vox Tablet
Lambda Literary

REVIEWS
Philip Jason, The Washington Independent Review of Books “[A] strikingly intelligent and emotionally wrenching narrative.”

The Gay & Lesbian Review “A remarkable work of reconstruction . . . As usual, Faderman’s seemingly effortless prose is the result of years of patient research. As far as possible, she has made sure that the past will be accurately remembered.”

Jonathan Kirsch, The Jewish Journal “To be sure, the Holocaust figures crucially in [Lillian Faderman’s] new memoir . . . but her book is more than a testimony of the Holocaust— it is a love story, a family memoir and, above all, an American tale.”

Carol Poll, Jewish Book Council “Faderman is a skilled storyteller and a careful documentarian . . . the historical details in the book have been provided by extensive research. It is these historical details and Faderman’s lyrical storytelling skill that make this book such an inviting read.”

Midwest Book Review “A gripping personal testimony. Author Lillian Faderman shares her mother's story of immigrating to America with high hopes of dancing, only to be swept up in the undercurrents of New York, and the struggles of being a worker in the garment industry. . . . A must for history and memoir collections focusing on personal tales.”

Nick Pachelli, The Advocate “Faderman expertly explores a jarring view into the immigrant life of Jewish Holocaust survivors living in the US.”

Booklist “As Faderman vividly chronicles her mother’s intense personality and complex experiences, she also freshly illuminates the Jewish immigrant experience.”

Make/shift “Faderman commands her material in this page-turner—no small feat with a subject so close to home.”

BLURBS
“Faderman’s story of her immigrant mother is so vividly imagined that you can taste the borscht Mary eats, squirm at the claustrophobia of her tiny rented room, and be swept up in the sensual delight that will betray her.”
—Janice Steinberg, author of The Tin Horse

“This book is a work of originality, written with such imaginative sympathy that I read it with unabating pleasure from beginning to end.”
—Vivian Gornick, author of Fierce Attachments

“Lillian Faderman is an extraordinary storyteller, one of the few who can tell a painful story with a complex ending—and imbue it with humor, sensuality, and earthy grace, in every sentence.”
—Amy Bloom, author of Away

“This is an exquisite piece of history—both resonantly personal and full of revelatory moments in  the history of  women, and of  New York in the early days of  the garment workers union and the shadow of the Holocaust. The sympathy and understanding Faderman shows for her immigrant mother and her whole family reminded me again of what I love about memoir. This is not just a story; these are lives on the page.”
—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

“My Mother’s Wars tells the aching story of immigrant factory workers in the decades preceding World War II—sad lives made sadder by the terrifying knowledge that their families in Europe are being extinguished. The book is part memoir, part reconstruction . . . and all artistry.”
—Edith Pearlman, author of Binocular Vision


EXCERPT
From the Preface

My mother kept no secrets from me about her strange and difficult life before I was born. For most of my growing-up years, she and I lived together in a single furnished room, “by a missus,” as such living arrangements used to be called. I think our symbiosis was probably much more powerful than the usual between mother and child because most of the time there was no one but the two of us, no other presence to distract or divert. The intensity of my focus on her was compounded, I imagine, because our daily life was played out in the space of no more than ninety square feet. In that tight proximity, she told me things because she had no one else to tell them to. I saw things because she had nowhere else to go and hide. I struggled to understand things because she was my constant care and study and love.

But the older I got, the less I understood. In the glorious hope and brashness of my young womanhood I knew only that the choices she’d made, which had brought her, and me along with her, to that lonely, airless furnished room of my childhood, had been incomprehensibly foolish, and that her mistakes would never be mine.

Thirty years after my mother’s death, my young-womanhood long gone, a sadness suddenly came upon me with the thought that though I’d known all her secrets, I hadn’t known her. I think that sadness was triggered because I’d been trying to relearn Yiddish, the language I usually spoke with her before I started going to school; and in a book I’d bought in order to practice reading in Yiddish, I came upon a lullaby by the writer Sholem Aleichem; it was one I remembered her singing when I was a child.

Bay dayn vigl zitst dayn mameh,
Zingt a lid un veynt.
Vest amol farshteyn mistame
Vos zi hot gemeynt.

I translate it this way:

Near your cradle sits your mother,
Singing a song and weeping.
Perhaps someday you’ll understand
What her tears meant.

My Mother’s Wars is my attempt to understand.




Scotch Verdict



REVIEWS
Terry Castle, Signs "Faderman continues her valuable excavations of the archaeology of erotic relationships between women.... [She] has succeeded in recreating an absorbing, often peculiarly moving courtroom drama."

Karla Jay, Women's Review of Books "The records are fascinating: they open up for us the worlds of the young female student and the schoolmistress, as well as the workings of the judicial system of early nineteenth-century Scotland. Beyond that, they make us privy to a unique glimpse of what lesbianism was considered to be at the time.... A brilliant find."

William French, Globe and Mail: "Faderman, a noted U.S. feminist, recreates the trial superbly, using the original transcripts and her own detective work. She examines the trial from a feminist viewpoint, showing how it revealed the prevailing attitudes toward women in a phallocentric society. Her approach is valid and compelling, but her story is fascinating on many other levels as well.... Totally engrossing."

Aron Row, San Francisco Book Review: "An absorbing transcript detailing the evolution of our understanding of the sexual relationships between women using the Scotch trial as the lynchpin. The story is mesmerizing while the writing is riveting."

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers


Amazon
Columbia University Press
Excerpts at Lodestar Quarterly

HONORS
Notable Book of the Year The New York Times
Editor's Choice Lambda Literary Award
Winner American Library Association [Stonewall] Award
Named one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History

 INTERVIEWS
Ms. Magazine
The Gay & Lesbian Review

REVIEWS
The Village Voice: "Odd Girls reverberates with the powerful voices of people speaking for themselves.... Faderman empowers her subject; instead of allowing lesbian lifestyles to be defined from the outside, her voice and those of other women transcend destructive stereotypes and misconceptions. Odd Girls offers a lucidly written and moving narrative of lesbian culture and community during its formative years."

Francine Prose, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Fascinating... poignant and moving... Odd Girls is full of facts and wonderful details that readers may not have encountered, things that are a pleasure to learn and that seem valuable to know."

Susan Brownmiller, The Washington Post Book World: "One has to respect the tenacity of Lillian Faderman for making sense of the evolution of lesbian life in twentieth-century America.... This is a remarkable social history.... Her study attains the depth and evenhandedness of a scholarly classic."

San Francisco Examiner: "An important and challenging work for lesbians and heterosexuals alike.... Odd Girls is a key work, the point of reference which all subsequent studies of twentieth-century lesbian life in the United States will begin."

Barbara Grier, Lambda Book Report: "Faderman's sweeping, mesmerizing prose accentuates the magnificent scholarship in this definitive account of lesbian life in the past 100 years.... Faderman has combined her talent and experience to accomplish this wonder."

Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle: "Nothing odd about Odd Girls——it combines clear prose with meticulous research. This book is an important contribution to understanding America and its people in our time."

New York Times Book Review: "A grand narrative synthesis of the cultural, social, and political history of lesbian life since the late nineteenth century.... Engaging and deeply moving stories."

The Independent: "A splendid, uplifting achievement."

Autostraddle "It’s chilling to read the back-and-forth between each triumph of queer culture and the inevitable backlash that followed it, and to trace the numerous societal forces that have conspired to make the world fear gay people — the near-arbitrariness of the modern Conservative religious push against LGBT rights comes into clear focus when you see it as just the latest opportunity for a ruling class to maintain or enhance their power at our expense. But the book isn’t about politics, really, and the most exciting part of the book is what survived and sometimes thrived despite all that, or because of it, and how that all led to where we are now."


Gay L.A.



HONORS
Winner Lambda Literary Award

REVIEWS
Publishers Weekly "This social, political, and cultural history of lesbian and gay life in Los Angeles by two seasoned historians is easily the subject's definitive work ... [and is] filled with illuminating facts."

Kirkus (starred) "An exceptionally literate, overstuffed chronicle of gay Tinseltown...Vital intellectual fare brimming with fascinating history."

Booklist: "Archival sources dating back to the nineteenth century; interviews [with] 250 people; ... and many other resources, public and private, furnished the raw materials for their informative, detailed account, which finds that 'historically, more lesbian and gay institutions started in Los Angeles than anywhere else on the planet.'"

Eloise Klein Healy, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Faderman and Timmons deliver a meticulously researched history of the city to support their claim that Los Angeles is the city with the most influence on the gay movement over the last 200 years. … Technical jargon or theoretical baggage often weighs down studies of this kind, but Gay L.A. reads like a novel. Faderman and Timmons have set out a dramatic struggle with Los Angeles as its epicenter, a struggle that reverberates through red and blue states and that questions institutions as basic as marriage and definitions as ancient as selfhood."

Library Journal (starred): "[T]heir remarkable capacity for sharp, vivid description, buttressed by an impressive research regimen that included new interviews, makes Gay L.A. insightful, comprehensive, and fluid. Faderman and Timmons make an irrefutable case for the importance of the city to queer history, and they astutely depict the internal fault lines of the 'gay community', which has often splintered along racial, class, and especially gender lines but which has also showed itself capable of coalescing in the face of crisis. Full of fascinating anecdotes (including much on Hollywood), wise and fair analysis, and significant and inspiring examples of courageous resistance recaptures from the unwritten histories of the past, Gay L.A. deserves a place in every library."

Chris Freeman, WeHo News: "Authors Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons―both of whom are distinguished, award-winning writers and scholars―have done a remarkable job in writing a lively, thorough, inclusive, and engaging chronicle of the last 150 years of "gay life" in Los Angeles and Southern California….The book brilliantly shows us how we got to where we are―the good with the not-so-good, the egos and the martyrs, the heroes/heroines and the victims. All of it is presented in a handsome volume with great illustrations, a highly readable style, and an astonishing amount of primary research―hundreds of interviews and journalistic excavations that will dazzle and surprise everyone who reads this important book. Gay L.A. is a fascinating contribution to the history of gay culture in America. A must-read, it will educate and entertain even its most informed audience."

BLURBS
“An essential contribution to the history of gay resistance and the development of a polotical consciousness. This book documents important events ignored in other histories.”
—John Rechy, author of City of Night

"Finally, in one beautifully documented mosaic of a page-turner, the whole his and herstory of my city, L.A., revealed as an epicenter of LGBT presence: Gabrelino Native Americans, All Fools Night, 'criminals' in the shadows of bars and clubs, police entrapment, Hollywood stars with partners in their 'employ', organizing to fight back before most of the country even woke up, founding half of all the institutions you ever heard of, grabbing political power, the surprising joy of coming out and the devastation of AIDS, it's all here in Gay L.A. Love, hate, sex, death...and it names names."
—Senator Sheila Kuehl, California (D―Los Angeles)

"In this entertaining history of gay and lesbian Los Angeles you'll find everyting from 'nances and saphic ladies,' 'flutters and fruiters,' 'cuddle-for-cash-cuties,' 'pansy joints,' and 'flounce factories' to one of the earliest sexual uses of 'go down' in 1914. So go West with Faderman and Timmons to mad, bad, Gay L.A. It's a trip!"
—Jonathan Ned Katz, author of The Invention of Heterosexuality

"Gay L.A. is the long-awaited chronicle of Los Angeles' important role in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. This documentation of Angelenos' considerable challenges and achievements during the 20th century is destined to become a classic."
—Jim Van Buskirk, co-author of Gay by the Bay and Program Manager, James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center, San Francisco Public Library

"As a third generation Californian and a longtime student of gay and lesbian history in the Golden State, I am amazed at the riches contained in Gay L.A. From the region's indigenous peoples to its first settlers on Bunker Hill, from the birth of the movies to the age of ACT-UP, the panorama of our past is expertly uncovered. Simply indispensable!"
—Mark Thompson, author of Gay Spirit and former senior editor of The Advocate

"Energetically researched and vividly written, Gay L.A. chronicles the good times and the bad, in the closet and out, of gay Angelenos of every sort, as they sought their place in the sun and, in so doing, ensured that Los Angeles would never, never, never be a boring place."
—Kevin Starr, author of Coast of Dreams and California: A History

"In Gay L. A., Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons have not only brought a hidden history to light, they've made it panoramic. I can't recall reading a book in which Los Angeles―or any city―has been portrayed as such a fascinating multitude of private lives that were destined to become public. This book is entertaining, informative, meticulous, and necessary."
—Bernard Cooper, author of The Bill From My Father, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum

Naked in the Promised Land



HONORS
Named among the best books of 2003 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Advocate
Winner Lambda Literary Award
Winner Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award

REVIEWS
Publishers Weekly  "[A] painful dynamic—driven by Faderman’s conflicting need to save herself and her mother—drives the book to disturbing emotional depths."

Kirkus "Noted gay-studies scholar Faderman crafts one of those rare autobiographies that conscientiously detail the temptations of destructive behavior while also celebrating the resilience of the human spirit."

Los Angeles Times  "A frank and moving book. . . . An exhilarating narrative of [Faderman’s] life."

Boston Sunday Globe  "This ungentle memoir spares no feelings, least of all the author’s, as it tells a riveting tale of truths more dangerous than fiction."

I Begin My Life All Over


Amazon
Beacon Press

REVIEWS
Jaime Meyer, Minneapolis Star-Tribune: "The root of the book is Hmong individuals' personal, true-life stories, and they make for powerful reading."

Publishers Weekly "Faderman's inclusion of the Hmong's history in Laos and China . . . deepens our awareness of the obstacles they've overcome in adjusting to their new country. This enriching book fulfills the author's aim 'to capture [the Hmongs'] living voices, and to make those voices resound in the reader's ears.'"

Hanya Yanagihara, A Magazine: "Faderman has collected oral histories from individuals ranging from adults who escaped through the jungles of Laos, to the American-born teenagers anxious to negotiate a balance between the American life they see on television and the scars of their familial and ethnic history."

Jeanne F. Brooks, The San Diego Union-Tribune: "Faderman supplies invaluable historical context, told succinctly and well, for the narratives. She also weaves brief personal anecdotes throughout the book and draws parallels between the Hmongs' experiences and those of her own life as a first-generation American and of her mother's, a Jewish immigrant."

BLURBS
"That these immigrants have endured so much and lived to tell the tale is almost more than the average reader can comprehend. I Begin My Life All Over belongs on everyone's reading list; this is truly a book to be grateful for."
—Gish Jen, author of Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land

"Lillian Faderman and Ghia Xiong have compiled this collection of oral histories with care and sensitivity. Readers who share their communities with Hmong refugees could learn much about their neighbors—and perhaps about themselves as well—from the varied and compelling viewpoints it presents."
—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down


Chloe Plus Olivia



HONORS
Winner Lambda Literary Award

REVIEWS
Judith Branzburg, The Lesbian Review of Books: "An extraordinary comprehensiveness and accessibility are the hallmarks of Faderman's work in this volume . . . A stunning collection. Chloe Plus Olivia is an invitation to a world of love and language that is not to be turned down."

Victoria Brownworth, The Advocate: "Lillian Faderman is one of the country's premier historians, and it is our good luck that her focus is on all things queer. In Chloe Plus Olivia she has produced a monumental work of research—a breathtaking 900-page compendium of several hundred years of lesbian literature."

Barbara Grier, Lambda Book Report: "Faderman's scholarship is the illuminating constant in the book . . . Her intelligence and acumen shine brightly."

To Believe in Women


Amazon

HONORS
Winner Lambda Literary Award

REVIEWS
Kirkus "An essential and impassioned addition to American history."

 Karla Jay, The New York Times "For those who need a dose of pride and a slice of history, Faderman's portraits should strike a popular note. To Believe in Women is a decent starting point for learning about these pioneers and their contributions to American life."

The Washington Post "Solid historical research and analysis in a voice that is easily accessible and often quite moving."

 Dianne Wood Middlebrook: "This book will raise eyebrows and consciousness."

Surpassing the Love of Men



HONORS
Winner American Library Association [Stonewall] Award
Named by Sarah Waters as her most formative book

REVIEWS
Carolyn Heilbrun, The New York Times Book Review "A welcome and needed history . . . above all because it makes us understand what is involved when women choose to love women."

 Phyllis Grosskurth, The New York Review of Books "One of the most significant contributions yet made to feminist literature."

Benjamin DeMott, The Atlantic Monthly "Instructive and humane . . . a powerful summons to the conscience."

Michel Foucault: "Remarkable for its rediscovering of text and also for its study of feelings that we no longer find in our societies."

San Francisco Chronicle: "A well-documented, fascinating, and controversial source of material for women who have always known that other women are natural allies."

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