Mazer Archives April 2023 Newsletter | Out of the Archive: Lillian Faderman Cassette Tapes

Lilian Faderman needs no introduction as an international literary scholar on lesbian history. The materials she has donated to the Mazer is an expansive collection of correspondence, photos, cassette tapes and newspaper clippings, along with manuscripts for three of her books Surpassing the Love of Men (1981), Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers (1991) and Chloe Plus Olivia (1994). This reflects the amount of research she conducts for all of her work. The photos and correspondence are immensely valuable to the archive because there is context and attached information. So often archivists are sorting through photos without dates, names, or places written on the materials or elaborated by the donor. These materials are also first hand accounts of events and depictions of real lives throughout lesbian history.

Her collection of cassette tapes are interviews from research she conducted for her many books. The Mazer has been digitizing Lillian Faderman’s cassette tapes, and has partnered with UCLA Professor Shawn VanCour to provide media archiving students the opportunity to digitize this analog media format. I am continuing the work in my internship, and it is a great experience to hear these interviews, and learn how to preserve the tapes for the future.

The cassette player is hooked up to an analog to digital converter, which then passes the signal through the computer as digital information.

This is the audio rack in UCLA’s media lab. But don’t be too overwhemled! This rack also supports the digitization of five other analog media formats, the cassette decks are only on the top few shelves.

To go from analog to digital the tapes are played in real time. Sitting down and listening to lesbians living in the 1930s and 1950s, or even the 80’s and 90’s, talk about their lovers, their families, their social circles, my mind wandered trying to visualize their words and imagine their reality. It was easy to hear my own experience in their words (except maybe not the wild sex parties), but the everyday. It seemed like so many things were unspoken.

Something that came up again and again was the question, “how did you know they were a lesbian?” or “why do you think they knew you were a lesbian?” Often time the response was, well we just knew. Lillian focused a lot on questions of performance and knowing. She often asked questions about gender roles, like who cleaned the house, who cooked, who worked. Did you wear feminine clothes or masculine? The answers never fell neatly into these categories.

There are 168 cassette tapes, of which only 36 have been digitized. Hopefully soon all of these tapes will be in a more secure format to be listened to by many others, facilitating intergenerational connections and an understanding of the past.

You can read more about Lillian Faderman’s collection on the Online Archive of California.