First Love

"When Lilly Dancyger was twenty-three years old, her best friend and cousin, Sabina, was violently raped and murdered. In the face of devastating loss, Dancyger stayed sane and whole by the magic and the medicine of her female friends. Each essay in First Love examines a different female friendship in her life, beginning with her first love-Sabina-whose loss becomes the springboard for Dancyger's examinations of her fierce and passionate relationships with women. Just as each friendship unlocks a new realm of self-discovery for Dancyger, each essay in this memoir begins with the deeply personal and ripples outward to examine broader cultural assumptions about feminine identity and desire, and the many ways women create and hold safe spaces for each other and ourselves in a world of covert (and often overt) patriarchy. Dancyger's focus ranges from the eighteenth-century notion of romantic friendship to the New York punk scene of her teen years, to film and nature-based spiritual practices, creating a kaleidoscopic portrait of female identity, and how women nurture each other"--