Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman

Maybe I learned to be that way precisely because of what I write about in Naked in the Promised Land. How do you think you came to be this person? In Naked in the Promised Land, you come through as very tenacious, passionate, and lucid. It would make sense to me that one would pick and choose what to translate. I was writing that during the height of the lesbian-feminist movement and maybe that was not as pertinent as the earlier history, where there is a lot of European material. I don’t speak Italian so I don’t know what exactly was chosen, but I can imagine there are parts of Surpassing the Love of Men, particularly the end, that are very specific to America. I think there are parts that are more pertinent to Italy than others. I know that Margherita worried that you would want your books published whole, though in this case, there was not enough money for such a project. So I was thrilled when Margherita said she wanted to translate the three of them. Then it went on to be translated in Turkish, as well as Slovenian, Slovakian, Japanese, and German.

We had a contract and then it suddenly disappeared and I don’t know what happened. Actually, when Surpassing the Love of Men first came out in 1981, an Italian publisher, Rizzoli, immediately asked to translate it. How did you feel when Margherita Giacobino asked about anthologising work from three separate volumes into one? I would like to start with a question that is specific to your visit to Italy. When she was invited to Torino, Italy in June to present her work at a conference organized in her honor, PopMatters spoke with her and her partner Phylliss Irwin, before they took part in the Gay Pride Parade that coincided with the conference. Her books, Surpassing the Love of Men, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, and To Believe in Women were recently translated to Italian and anthologised in one volume for the publisher Il Dito e La Luna. Her more recently published memoir, Naked in the Promised Land, traces her experiences as the daughter of a single immigrant mother, her coming out in the 1950s, and her evolution as a feminist and scholar. Her groundbreaking scholarly texts have been acclaimed and consulted for a quarter of a century. Soft-spoken, attentive, and highly intelligent, she’s made her name as an academic and activist. Lillian Faderman might be described as a cat who roars.

Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman