( 9 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 24 2009
I was trying to remember the name of a wonderful book I read several years ago, and I finally did...this was it...Ms. Faderman has lead a truly interesting life and this extremely candid telling of it is probably one of the best book I've ever read....try it, you'll LOVE it..Gemma
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Posted: Apr 21 2008
Lillian Faderman writes an autobiography with an engaging and compelling style that easily pulls in the reader. She is technically the child of a Holocaust survivor, although her mother and aunt arrived before WWII, sent ahead to America (one presumes this is the Promised Land in Faderman's book title) by the family, to find work in America, sending money home, preparing the way for the rest of the family to eventually settle in America. Only that reunion never happened: all of Faderman's relatives perished in the Holocaust, and the rest of her mother's life was defined by survivor's guilt, a legacy of conflicting emotions that were inevitably passed on to the first generation of children born after the Holocaust. Lillian Faderman and others of her generation carried the burdens of the ghosts of the slaughtered, the relatives and loved ones who were killed before they were even born. Faderman's story goes beyond being Jewish: as the first-generation American child born to an immigrant, her experience is one that will speak to many, Jewish or otherwise, and it really is a classic story. The child of an immigrant garment worker, she grew up to live the American dream, getting a college education, eventually becoming a noted historian, textbook author and researcher. True life stories don't get any better than this one. Even more important is her retelling of the California dream, as it can only be told through the eyes of someone who wasn't born here, but who was brought here, and whose life story would have been entirely different had she and her mother stayed in New York. So many people will see themselves in her story. The California (and specifically Los Angeles) of today bears no resemblance to the promised land that lured the Faderman family here, and my own generation is more obsessed with getting the hell out, at any cost and by any means necessary. But it wasn't always that way; once upon a time, Los Angeles really was the place where dreams could come true, a child of an immigrant could grow up and become a movie star of sorts, one of the most brilliant minds in America, a respected historian and trailblazer in academia.
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Posted: Apr 21 2008
Lillian Faderman writes an autobiography with an engaging and compelling style that easily pulls in the reader. She is technically the child of a Holocaust survivor, although her mother and aunt arrived before WWII, sent ahead to America (one presumes this is the Promised Land in Faderman's book title) by the family, to find work in America, sending money home, preparing the way for the rest of the family to eventually settle in America. Only that reunion never happened: all of Faderman's relatives perished in the Holocaust, and the rest of her mother's life was defined by survivor's guilt, a legacy of conflicting emotions that were inevitably passed on to the first generation of children born after the Holocaust. Lillian Faderman and others of her generation carried the burdens of the ghosts of the slaughtered, the relatives and loved ones who were killed before they were even born. Faderman's story goes beyond being Jewish: as the first-generation American child born to an immigrant, her experience is one that will speak to many, Jewish or otherwise, and it really is a classic story. The child of an immigrant garment worker, she grew up to live the American dream, getting a college education, eventually becoming a noted historian, textbook author and researcher. True life stories don't get any better than this one.
