Transcript of Lillian Faderman

Lillian Faderman: I came to the point where I felt that I really wanted to figure out who this woman, who was my mother, who was she? It seemed to me that at this point in my life, I really wanted to understand these things that I had never thought deeply enough about in the past. When I'd thought of my mother before, I loved her very much. But she seemed to me just this pathetic figure. And I thought that she was a negative role model for me. It always seemed to me that if I had any strengths at all, what I learned from her was what not to do, what not to emulate. But I really wanted to look at her more closely. And it suddenly felt that it was so important to figure out who this person was. And once having figured it out, I've come to see her as so heroic. And I never understood that before. I only understood that she was a woman who never succeeded in America, who never managed to do what you were supposed to do, fulfill the "American Dream." But I see that what she did was just she was a superwoman. That she could have a child that she raised on her own. That she went to work every day, despite the fact that it was so difficult for her. We were on what was called "relief" in New York for about six months, and after that she worked. And she supported us, even during these, what I saw as, psychotic episodes, her guilt over her brother and her sisters. Nevertheless, she got herself to work whenever she could. And it was so wonderful to be able to understand that about my mother. That she was not a victim. That in many ways, she was really heroic.