First Love

Informationen zum Autor Lilly Dancyger is the author of the memoir Negative Space, selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, and the editor of Burn It Down , a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women's anger. Dancyger's writing has been published by Guernica , Literary Hub , The Rumpus , Longreads , The Washington Post , Playboy , Rolling Stone , and more. She lives in New York City and teaches creative nonfiction at Columbia University School of the Arts. Klappentext A bracing, intimate essay collection about the power and complexity of female friendship in the wake of violence, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space. When Lilly Dancyger's beloved cousin Sabina was murdered just as both girls were entering their young adult lives, the shock and grief altered her perception of what it meant to be a woman in the world, and rippled through her closest friendships. The loss of her first loveSabinabecomes the springboard for this bold and refreshing exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendships and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family. Each essay in First Love is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger's life, expanding outward to dissect cultural assumptions about feminine identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with pop culture and literature ranging from nineteenth century fairytales to true crime, Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the "sad girls of Tumblr, Dancyger's essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an incisive exploration of what it means to love each other. First Love elevates friendships to the love stories they truly are, giving them the deep consideration that romantic relationships have enjoyed for centuries. Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it's our friends who will help us survive. Zusammenfassung A bracing, intimate essay collection about the power and complexity of female friendship in the wake of violence, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space. When Lilly Dancyger's beloved cousin Sabina was murdered just as both girls were entering their young adult lives, the shock and grief altered her perception of what it meant to be a woman in the world, and rippled through her closest friendships. The loss of her first loveSabinabecomes the springboard for this bold and refreshing exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendships and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family. Each essay in First Love is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger's life, expanding outward to dissect cultural assumptions about feminine identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with pop culture and literature ranging from nineteenth century fairytales to true crime, Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the "sad girls of Tumblr, Dancyger's essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an incisive exploration of what it means to love each other. First Love elevates friendships to the love stories they truly are, giving them the deep consideration that romantic relationships have enjoyed for centuries. Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it's our friends wh...

Autorentext

Lilly Dancyger is the author of the memoir Negative Space, selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards, and the editor of Burn It Down, a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women’s anger. Dancyger’s writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and others. She lives in New York City and is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts.

Zusammenfassung
A “vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays” (Associated Press) that treats women’s friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space

“A tender, unswerving homage to her found family, but also an insightful study of friendship as identity-crafting.”—Elle

Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger’s devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

Each essay in this incisive collection *is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairy tales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to *Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls” of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.

Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.

Leseprobe
First Love

I sent my first love letter when I was six years old. My handwriting was blocky and large, requiring great effort and concentration to express this big emotion my little body could barely contain. I made a card shaped like a butterfly—cut out with safety scissors, decorated with elaborate colored-pencil patterns—and wrote to my five-year-old cousin Sabina that being far away from her made me feel like a butterfly with one wing.

The grown-ups called us Snow White and Rose Red, after the Grimms’ fairy tale about two sisters who match their mother’s two rosebushes—one that produces white roses and the other red. Though our mothers shared a sisterly resemblance, I had my Jewish father’s wild curly hair and pale blue eyes, and Sabina had her Filipino father’s warm brown skin and straight black hair, always brushed to a sheen and neatly braided. Dark and light, opposite twins.

“Snow White and Rose Red” (no relation to the Snow White of Disney fame, from another Grimms’ story) is remarkable among fairy tales because the two sisters are not rivals or foils, but simply love each other. “The two children were so fond of one another,” the story goes, “that they always held each other by the hand when they went out together, and when Snow White said: ‘We will not leave each other,’ Rose Red answered: ‘Never so long as we live.’ ”

In my earliest memories, before my parents and I moved from New York to San Francisco when I was five, Sabina was always either by my side or nearby. Sometimes we lived together, and sometimes we just stayed over at each other’s apartments a lot. One morning…