Early Embraces: True-Life Stories of Women Describing Their First Lesbian Experience

by Lindsey Elder

This collection of real-life first-person stories by women from around the country describing their first sexual experience with another woman sparkles with laughter, awkward moments, and plenty of hot sex. These sometimes naughty, sometimes nice stories take a tantalizing and illuminating peek at just how lesbians begin the process of exploring their sexuality. Occasionally poignant, sometimes funny, always unflinchingly real, Early Embraces is an original collection not to be missed.

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer, Lesbian, Short Stories, Memoir, Erotica

190 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1996

Reviews

[Freyja Vanadis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful collection of short (very short - some were only two pages long) stories of women's first time sexual experiences with other women. I would've given it five stars but there were a few stories that were written in poem form, and my interest in poetry is less than zero. Otherwise, it's a really sweet book. I didn't read it as erotica because I don't think that's what it was meant to be, even though these stories are about sex and a few of them are somewhat explicit. One of the previous reviewers said there was too much sex for him. Well, hello! What did he expect? It's a book about women describing their first sexual experiences. Didn't the title kind of give it away?

[Acquafortis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it slowly, taking months to finish, savouring every single story being told. Stories told from the heart, many with pain and passion that only self-discovery can bring.
In most of the stories I could identify myself with a feeling, an emotion, a situation or a detail.
So I would suggest it to all those who are in search of their sexual identity or just feeling as the only one on plant earth.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say? I love it. Lots of emotional intensity as opposed to physical erotic intensity...although plenty of that is incorporated, too ;)

[Justin T · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a piece of herstory

[Meen]

I figure reading some of these might be helpful since my first lesbian experience was so freaking traumatic and humiliating! :)

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, account of sexual encounters between women. I enjoyed the turn of every page.

[Andre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like erotic. Sometimes clitche, but often sweet. Too much sex for me.

[Lyla · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a long time for this book mainly because I wanted to take my time reading each. Now I need to come out and say that sometimes the contents of the stories aren't the best. There can be bits of biphobia, or startling age gaps or what happened when people were very young. In all of this, however, is about women who had their first lesbian experience. And not every experience is going to be like mine, who still hasn't ever even been with someone in that way at the writing of this review. These are also stories anywhere from the 50s to the 90s. That doesn't excuse the biphobia, nor do I encourage it, but parts of it make sense. There's an uneducated quality of a lot of them, and it can be hard to remember in the age of the internet that not everyone knows everything at that time. It really hits when people mention not knowing what a lesbian even is. These are stories that are valuable still, of being young and stupid and learning what it means to be a lesbian in times where that wasn't acceptable.

The other part is that none of this is fiction, this is what people lived through and did. Again, I don't agree with a lot of what happened in the book, but its a memorandum. It feels important to me, as a lesbian who grew up with the internet, to know what it was like for those people. To those who are older than me trying to figure out what it means to be a lesbian and the hurt or longing in it. I don't know if I would ever go back to read this book, but I think for any other questioning lesbian it would be good to hand over and say this is what people lived through. You can look online now and find any lesbian retelling their tales in finding themselves, and its valuable. It's just the printed format, of old lesbians at the time, the proof of having always existed, is valuable to me. I don't really know how else to end this review, other than that books like this make me reflect at how lucky I am to be in the position I am in.

[Honor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This entire series is pretty much to die for. Normally I'd write a more expansive review, but the title and jacket are self-explanatory, and it's a simple idea.

Reading it is like falling in love every three pages. It's wonderful.

[✟Roxanne✟(Death by Book Avalanche) ☠ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice collection of stories filled with a bit of everything. There is romance, love, passion and lust as well as heartache, pain, misery and loss. This book isn't full of just erotica (although there is some) it's full of real stories written by real people.

[HeavyReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book because my friend Karen F. has a piece in it.

Lots of sweet and juicy stories, but it doesn't quite work as erotica for me.

[Prilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me cry... a lot.