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.

"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"--