Kirjahaku

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 love--Sabina--becomes 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, Ana s 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.

The rage of women is at a high: sparked by the Women's March of early 2017, stoked by countless policies of the Trump administration, and finally reaching incineration levels over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in October 2018. But this issue isn't just timely--there's depth to the idea of women's rage: who gets to be angry (white women, black women, young women)? How do women express their anger? And what will they do with it as a collective? In Burn It Down, a diverse group of women authors explore what rage means to them--from the personal to the systemic, the unackowledged to the public, and more. One woman describes a complicated rage at one's own body--for being ill with no explanation--while another writes of the rage she inherits from her father. One Pakistani-American contributor says, "to openly express my anger would be too American," and explains why. Edited by Lilly Dancyger, a Catapult editor and writing instructor, Burn It Down is an anthology that offers literary catharsis and narrative variety to the many readers who have propelled Rebecca Traiser's Good and Mad to the NYT bestseller list.

Despite her parents’ struggles with addiction, Lilly Dancyger always thought of her childhood as a happy one. But what happens when a journalist interrogates her own rosy memories to reveal the instability around the edges? Dancyger’s father, Joe Schactman, was part of the iconic 1980s East Village art scene. He created provocative sculptures out of found materials like animal bones, human hair, and broken glass, and brought his young daughter into his gritty, iconoclastic world. She idolized him—despite the escalating heroin addiction that sometimes overshadowed his creative passion. When Schactman died suddenly, just as Dancyger was entering adolescence, she went into her own self-destructive spiral, raging against a world that had taken her father away. As an adult, Dancyger began to question the mythology she’d created about her father—the brilliant artist, struck down in his prime. Using his sculptures, paintings, and prints as a guide, Dancyger sought out the characters from his world who could help her decode the language of her father’s work to find the truth of who he really was.