Living her dream

By Umaymah Rashid
The Collegian

The remarkable life of Lillian Faderman reads like a script straight out of a Hollywood movie.

It starts in 1923 before Faderman was born when Faderman’s mother and aunt moved to New York with dreams of marrying rich men and bringing the rest of the Faderman family to the United States from Latvia. That never happened.

“Just about the time I was born, Hitler’s troops marched through my mother’s little village in Eastern Europe and killed the entire Jewish population in that village,” Faderman said.

Although Faderman and her mother never fully recovered from the loss of their family, Faderman steamed forward towards achieving the American dream.

As the child of an immigrant garment worker, life was tough for Faderman, who would later abandon plans of becoming a movie star and attend the University of California, Los Angeles as well as the University of California, Berkeley.

“I think I was realistic as a working class kid,” Faderman said. “I think I understood what I needed was not the chanciness of Hollywood — I really needed a profession.”

She would soon have more professions than some people have their entire life.

Not only was Faderman a very accomplished student driven to succeed, she also performed as a burlesque dancer at a strip club in San Francisco as a means of supporting herself during her years at Berkeley.

“I did 17 shows a week at the President Follies,” Faderman said. “I would sit in the dressing room and do my homework and most of the time I was at Berkeley, I was on the honor roll because I did my homework so diligently in between my shows at the President Follies.”

After graduating from Berkeley with a Ph.D. at just 26 years old, Faderman took a job with the English department at Fresno State.

“Incidentally, when I came to Fresno, I was the first and only woman in the English department and one of the few women in an academic department,” Faderman said.

Faderman is not just a former burlesque dancer and Fresno State professor; she is also an award-winning author and historian of gay and lesbian culture.

She has published 11 books and won numerous lifetime achievement and literary awards. Her books have been concerned with ethnic studies as well as gay and lesbian history.

The first book written by Faderman on the subject of homosexuality was “Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present,” which explores female sexuality and 500 years of love and friendship between women.

“That was really the first book in the world that tried to create a history of the very vilified topic of female homosexuality,” Faderman said.

Many of the reviews, articles and research described her as the founder and pioneer of gay and lesbian studies.

Not only is Faderman considered to be the founder of gay and lesbian studies, she also helped found the women studies department at Fresno State in 1970, spent five years in administration, was the first women chair of the English department, was the acting dean of the humanities department as well as the assistant vice president for academic affairs.

Most of Faderman’s accomplishments can be credited to her commitment and avid pursuit of the American dream.

“I wanted to test America to see if it was really true that you could achieve the American dream in this country, and yes, it was true,” Faderman said. “That was lovely to be able to find out that it was true, that you could come from a poor background and you can do anything you really wanted to do if you put your mind to it and focused yourself.”

The Hollywood script that is the life story of Professor Lillian Faderman is still in the happy ending stage.

On a book tour for her 11th book, “Gay LA: A History of Social Vagrants, Hollywood Rejects, and Lipstick Lesbians,” Faderman is still reaping the benefits of her hard work and desire. Faderman said she is very happy and satisfied with what she has accomplished as well as what she has contributed.

“I look back over a career of 40 years and I don’t think I’ve wasted my life,” Faderman said. “It makes me feel very good.

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