ISBN Naked in the Promised Land (A Memoir)

Born in 1940, Lillian Faderman is the only child of an uneducated and unmarried Jewish woman, who fled to America to escape the Nazis. Her mother's family perished in the Holocaust, and her mother was racked by guilt at having left them behind, suffering recurrent psychotic episodes. The only relief she had from this, and her brutal sweatshop job, was loving Lilly.Lilly grows into Lil, a beautiful young woman who learns that her deepest erotic and emotional connections are with other women, and who finds herself in a dangerous but seductive world of addicts, pimps, and prostitutes.Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful, and to redeem her mother's suffering, she studies at University of California, Berkeley - paying her way by working as a burlesque stripper. At last she becomes Lillian, a brilliant student and the woman who becomes a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer and ground-breaking pioneer of gay and lesbian scholarship.Told with wrenching immediacy and great power, this is an extraordinary memoir: the nakedly honest story of an exceptional woman and her remarkable, unorthodox life.