carrienation76's review
4.0
Full transparency here - I purchased this book because (1) I love bell hooks and (2) Brittney Cooper mentions it in Eloquent Rage. Those two things combined... and I bought it without hesitation. This is my first "self-help" book ever. In the first chapter or so, I rolled my eyes a bunch - not because I questioned anything hooks wrote, but instead that seems to be my natural response to anything provokes self-reflection that I'm not emotionally ready for. So, I put the book down for a day and came back with an open mind... and this book really knocked me down. I've read other feminist writing, so many of these themes were comfortable for me. But, honestly, I hadn't taken much time over the last many years to consider love and my relationship to it. This text illuminated moments in my life that I have felt at a loss to describe for many years. There's a lot to process and reflect on. Naturally, I recommend this book and I look forward to reading the preceding two volumes in this trilogy.
greenkarebear's review
5.0
bell hooks is my favorite author. This book completely spun my feminism and feminist thought. This book was calm, educational, not angry. It was really nice to read about feminism that was not fueled by rage. This book has made be a better partner, a better friend, a better feminist, and has completely changed my worldview when it comes to how I talk about love, recognizing sexism in other women (and myself), how patriarchy actually harms men, and the realization all of the internal work and getting to know myself will pay off in my relationships and loving. I can’t neglect love, everyone needs love.
“ it takes courage for women to challenge the seduction of domination, the making of love synonymous with erotic conflict between the powerful and the powerless. Returning away from patriarchal perversion of love, the demand that we neglect the self to do for others, was certainly essential to women’s collective growth. Yet we turned away from a negative vision of love, without putting in its place a positive vision, one that would transform, that would heal and renew. In time, women begin to feel shame that all the trappings of our newly gained equality and public presence did nothing to satisfy our souls. No wonder so many of us started going back to the old, romantic version of rescue and salvation in partnership, seeking an emotionally safety that, though found, remains unsatisfying and unfulfilling.”
“ it takes courage for women to challenge the seduction of domination, the making of love synonymous with erotic conflict between the powerful and the powerless. Returning away from patriarchal perversion of love, the demand that we neglect the self to do for others, was certainly essential to women’s collective growth. Yet we turned away from a negative vision of love, without putting in its place a positive vision, one that would transform, that would heal and renew. In time, women begin to feel shame that all the trappings of our newly gained equality and public presence did nothing to satisfy our souls. No wonder so many of us started going back to the old, romantic version of rescue and salvation in partnership, seeking an emotionally safety that, though found, remains unsatisfying and unfulfilling.”
vfong's review
5.0
Damn. Hooks breaks down the flaws of our patriarchal society and how it’s skewed women’s ability to love in a way that reads easy but hits deep. It’s both supported and challenged my notions of love in starting this new chapter of my life, to truly nurture and put time into relationships of importance to me, whether that be with friends with a partner or with yourself. Some of my favorite quotes:
“There is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women... I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
“While no one can do the work of self-understanding and self-love for us, when we join together with another committed love, we will be transformed. The self will grow and expand.”
“Women in love offer to the world our inner gifts, seeking companions to share mutual regard and recognition - a communion of souls that will sustain and abide.”
“There is so much pressure on women to be heterosexual, and this pressure is both so pervasive and so completely denied, that I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women... I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
“While no one can do the work of self-understanding and self-love for us, when we join together with another committed love, we will be transformed. The self will grow and expand.”
“Women in love offer to the world our inner gifts, seeking companions to share mutual regard and recognition - a communion of souls that will sustain and abide.”
simplybibliophiles's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
So it took me a minute to get through this…and at first, I thought it was me.
Right? Like it has to be me; it can’t be RENOWNED VISIONARY bell hooks.
I don’t know if it was her or me, but I did not enjoy this like I did All About Love and Salvation.
No one writes about love like bell hooks. No one. And yet, while I happily received that the overall theme of the book, that community cannot exist without love and, further, self-love (and vice versa)…
…the way to this takeaway….the way through…was trying.
- She gave most of the major takes early on and continuously repeated them over and over - all the way through the book. IMO, this book could have been 70 to 90 pages less than it was.
- Some of the takes espoused felt extreme and, to be very honest, biased. It felt like she was relying on, if not generalizations, mostly her opinion. This was no more present than in the chapters addressing heteronormative relationships and the chapter on women being in community: Case in point: “Particularly, women seem unable to acknowledge or value an individual woman who is perceived as exceptional” (pg.131).
- Her CONSTANT references to John Gray’s Women are From Venus, Men are From Mars - for a book she despises, she mentions the title and the theories that it espouses A LOT. We get it…
- This is minor, but her claim that Pearl Harbor, Gladiator, Men In Black, Independence Day, and Armageddon are movies that “glamorize killing” was glaringly random, not to mention a reach. She may have a point with Gladiator…maybe, I guess. Still, Pearl Harbor is a (read: sensationalized) period piece about an event that actually happened, AND QUITE LITERALLY is MIB and Independence Day about fighting not people, but aliens [Y’all, I low-key have a theory that she hates Will Smith.] Armageddon is QUITE LITERALLY about human-on-asteroid violence.
- The insinuation of her childhood (her father and her parent's relationship) as well as her relationship with her partner repeatedly so within the text. Hooks does this in her other works, but here, it felt like she was interjecting her experiences all the time, from paragraph to paragraph. The first few mentions, okay, fine, lived experiences, can provide great context for our understanding of the world. However, ingratiating your lived experiences into every subtopic discussion while making some pretty big generalizations felt problematic. Not to mention glaringly singular.
This last bullet sums up my major issues with Communion. While the last chapter of the book eloquently and comprehensively summed up most of the critical aspects of this book: about love and community and how self-love is genuinely the only way to achieve all other types of love…as a body of work as a whole, this felt less about love and the female search for it, and more so about hooks’ retrospective analysis of love, expectations, and community, based on her own lived experiences.
kennedy_couch's review
4.0
Another great book from bell hooks.
This one is a 4/4.5 for me - I annotated so much and know I’ll be coming back to this one throughout my life to see what resonates at different stages.
Like with “All About Love,” there are so many things that were validating and affirming to me in this book. hooks does have a tendency to write from the perspective that the ideas she puts forward are universal and I don’t always agree or resonate fully, but I enjoy considering them nevertheless. I particularly love her thoughts on aging, motherhood, self-love and community, and how the patriarchy harms both men and women.
I am yearning for a book about love in female friendships and was disappointed that this wasn’t really covered here. I also found that where I agreed with hooks, I didn’t know how to implement what she was advocating for or practice it in real life. I would have loved to see more about how we individually and collectively build towards the new way of loving she describes
This one is a 4/4.5 for me - I annotated so much and know I’ll be coming back to this one throughout my life to see what resonates at different stages.
Like with “All About Love,” there are so many things that were validating and affirming to me in this book. hooks does have a tendency to write from the perspective that the ideas she puts forward are universal and I don’t always agree or resonate fully, but I enjoy considering them nevertheless. I particularly love her thoughts on aging, motherhood, self-love and community, and how the patriarchy harms both men and women.
I am yearning for a book about love in female friendships and was disappointed that this wasn’t really covered here. I also found that where I agreed with hooks, I didn’t know how to implement what she was advocating for or practice it in real life. I would have loved to see more about how we individually and collectively build towards the new way of loving she describes
lnreads's review
5.0
bell hooks writes monographs that are life-altering. Her works leave you feeling like your entire notion of the world and how we exist in relation to one another is now fundamentally altered. She makes you think, cry, reflect, rejoice. She is an incredible thinker, and Communion is yet another testament of that.