Lillian Faderman s Influence On Women Essay - 1363 Words

Lillian Faderman was born in New York in 1940 as a second generation Latvian-Jewish immigrant. While she held a great responsibility in raising herself, her caretakers were primarily her mother and her aunt, who both arrived in the United States in the early 1900s. Her mother and her aunt both struggled financially as single women who provided for themselves. As a child Faderman began to recognize her attraction towards women, which led to an internal struggle she dealt with well into her adolescence. In addition to coming from a working class background and struggling with her sexuality, Faderman also experienced life as a second-class citizen as a woman in a male-dominated world. Faderman’s experiences provide a lens through which to identify some of the social expectations she fought to overcome as a lesbian and a working-class female. At a young age Faderman relocated to the west coast with her mother and her aunt. As a small child living with her two guardians in East Los Angeles, Faderman was able to witness the struggle presented by lack of money and being among the working class. Faderman primarily grew up in small, furnished rooms, and for a portion of her childhood shared a room and a bed with her mother. Both her mother and her aunt worked long hours in a garment factory, to which it took three buses to arrive each day (26). She was able to witness how the hard work and the long hours weighed on not only her mother’s looks, but also her mental wellbeing. She