Communion: The Female Search for Love

A beautiful and quietly radical exploration of love as something learned, practised, and often distorted by the structures we live in.

This is part of hooks’ broader engagement with love as an ethical and political practice, and it sits firmly in that space between critique and care. What I find most compelling is the insistence that love is not an accident or a reward, but something that requires attention and responsibility, particularly in contexts shaped by patriarchy and inequality.

I did not always need to agree with every repetition or emphasis to feel the strength of the underlying argument. The book is less interested in novelty than in returning, insistently, to what love might actually demand of us if taken seriously.

I also show more picked this up in part because I admire hooks’ work more generally, and in part—less nobly—because of the recurring frustration of seeing similar ideas reappear in contemporary discourse without acknowledgment of their origins or, in more blatant instances, the title and ideas reused by troglodytes that lack the intellectual or emotional depth for even their ghostwriter to make a passable imitation (but this is not directed at anyone in particular...). There is something motivating, even if slightly spite-driven, about returning to the source. show less

hooks is not only an activist for change, she is an activist and a believer in the right to and power of love - and her recent trilogy on the subject explores this eloquently. when i was in california back in february, a friend recommended these to me, and i’m so glad. definitely these are some of the best and most progressive books i have read on defining, understanding, and looking for love within the patriarchal morass we often find ourselves in. love, she posits, is subverted by popular notions of love on television and in the movies - and it is a radical act to reclaim love, and to be open to it, and to live it. i found these books hopeful and moving and they made me realize my own rights to love free of coercion and violence, show more and that this is as worth a goal as any. show less

the information regarding the patriarchical society was presented very well with illuminating descriptions. I was not always pleased with the repetitions, but the content was worth it.

my heart hurts and
is at peace
at the same
time
i want to write a good
poem
scribble it around
the internet
so you can read
but never know
what it actually
feels like
yes
by only
reading
who knows what it
feels like

Insightful and inspiring critique on patriarchal customs surrounding love and self-love.

This is a good book for women frustrated with relationships, and who are searching for ways to be in loving relationships.

The third and final book in hooks's trilogy on love, "Communion challenges every female to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free." from book jacket