Outfest UCLA Legacy Project Film Gallery – Lillian Faderman

Lillian Faderman is an internationally-known scholar of lesbian history and literature, as well as ethnic history and literature. Her 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, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship, including Yale University’s James Brudner Award, the Monette/Horwitz Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Culture Hero Award, and the American Association of University Women’s Distinguished Senior Scholar Award. The New York Times named two of her books, SURPASSING THE LOVE OF MEN and ODD GIRLS AND TWILIGHT LOVERS, on its “Notable Books of the Year” list.

Faderman’s memoir, NAKED IN THE PROMISED LAND, tells her life story as the daughter of a single immigrant mother, her coming out in the 1950s, and her evolution as a feminist and scholar. While a student at the University of California, Berkeley, she paid her way through school working as a stripper and performed a burlesque at President Follies as Mink Frost. She also posed for men’s magazines. The images on this website were in KING Magazine in 1959 and shown here courtesy of the One National Gay & Lesbian Archive and Lillian Faderman.

WRITINGS BY LILLIAN FADERMAN

“White Slumming In Harlem” and “Black Lesbians in Harlem” from Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America 

“The Women’s Story” from GAY L.A.: A HISTORY OF SEXUAL OUTLAWS, POWER POLITICS, AND LIPSTICK LESBIANS co-authored by Stuart Timmons

Transcript of lecture, Lesbian Chic in the ‘20s by Lillian Faderman.

RELATED RESOURCES

Archive Research & Study Center at UCLA – for more information on how to access the Outfest Legacy Project Collection and the UCLA Film & Television Archive

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archive – for more information on how to research Faderman’s paper collection

Lillian Faderman’s Website

Watch the Film

Lesbian Chic in the ‘20s by Lillian Faderman

A Culture Series lecture at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archive in Los Angeles, CA on June 3rd, 1990
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