I loved this book. I love bell hooks in general, but happened to read this book at exactly the right time in my life so that it was a profound and transformative experience; it is always gratifying to see my own philosophy laid out in print with articulate grace, and "Communion" was deeply affirming in that way. hooks agrees with Fromm that love is an art form, "an action informed by care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility." hooks says that it is not possible to have love and domination at the same time; we only really love in relationships that honor freedom and equality. I don't know a whole lot about feminist theory, but what I learned about it here I found fascinating. hooks' treatise on love is passionate and positive, and goes a long way to build up strength and determination in readers. I breezed through this book in two days, and enjoyed it immensely. bell hooks is full of hard truths, but she presents her thoughts in such a way that her work is uplifting, compassionate, and hopeful. The voice of bell hooks rings with moral rectitude, but it is also a voice that is full of kindness, openness, and wholehearted forgiveness. bell hooks also includes some memoir material in this book, detailing parts of her life I had never read about or learned about before. I enjoyed that material a great deal. bell hooks is such an incredibly brave, incredibly fierce and inspiring feminist. It always ennobles me to read her work. I’m so glad that, in my opinion, there’s more discourse about elevating friendship in society now, from explicitly naming the oppressive force of amatonormativity to openly discussing relationship anarchy. Throughout Communion and especially in the chapter on romantic friendships, hooks highlights her ability to question the status quo about relationships and to think outside of the box to procure long and lasting love. I’ll end this review with one more passage from that chapter I enjoyed:

PLACEHOLDER ANXIETY between women who are "romantic friends", when possibly, eventually, one of them finds a partner and leaves the other "behind" OR both find partners and leave each other a little bit I also liked the way she tore into our culture's devaluation of platonic and queer relationships: In heterosexist, patriarchal culture, the only commitments that are deemed truly acceptable and worthy are those between straight women and men who marry. bell hooks is a feminist theorist and writer and this is part of a group of books she wrote about love. This one examines love from a female perspective, delving deeply into feminist theory, where feminism both succeeded and failed, and the utter importance of learning how to love for everyone (not just women). She discusses the importance of loving yourself before you can love anyone else, and the fact that love cannot exist in patriarchal relationships. She discusses the false idea that women are naturally more loving, showing how this is part of patriarchy, and argues that everyone can (and must) learn to love, optimally beginning in childhood.The vast majority of us have flesh on our bones. I wish I could report that we all love that flesh. Some of us do. Most of us do not. A great many of us simply give up, engaging in a process of negative acceptance. By that I mean that an individual woman may not like her looks, her weight, but ceases trying to change herself so that she no longer confroms to conventional sexist aesthetic standards, because to do so lessens her anxiety and stress. But she is still not self-loving. We cannot negate our bodies and love them. Ouch. If this isn't me to a T. she did bash on patriarchal men a lot (love) but she never blamed men or suggested that women were the victim. she empowered women to take accountability and to put in the work to find and create meaningful, mutual love. i love how she wrapped the book up by talking about the importance of all love - self love, romantic friendships, and romantic love and how we need all of them to live a fulfilled life, and that giving and receiving love from yourself and close friends is what enriches romantic relationships. i loved how she challenged the idea that women innately have more capacity for emotion and are naturally more capable of giving love than men and how this idea influences our relationships and society (and allows us to accept men who are emotionally withholding). “Antipatriarchal thinking, which assumes that both women and men are equally capable of learning how to love, of giving and receiving love, is the only foundation on which to construct sustained, meaningful, mutual love.”

I’m so glad that, in my opinion, there’s more discourse about elevating friendship in society now, from explicitly naming the oppressive force of amatonormativity to openly discussing relationship anarchy. Throughout Communion and especially in the chapter on romantic friendships, hooks highlights her ability t Um, But then it also talks about friendship. So females, women finding, um, intense, lasting connecting friendship, um, and also kind of cross-generational relationships. So kind of every aspect of, um, of finding love and connection. And the title really says it all: communion it’s about, um, she could have equally as well, I think said connection, but that doesn’t imply the sort of deep level of connection that she really means kind of really knowing a whole person and feel known and seen as a whole person. And so she’s talking about how women find that. And, of course, the whole thing is colored by patriarchy. So her whole message is how women find communion with other people or fail to find communion with other people in our patriarchal culture. So these are, think of them as essays, I guess, although they do flow together, they’re not standalone, but they do kind of feel like essays.Buy Communion: The Female Search for Love (Love Song to the Nation) pdfAdvertising eBooks Buy Communion: The Female Search for Love (Love Song to the Nation) pdf Published in 2002, "Communion: The Female Search for Love," by bell hooks/Gloria Watkins, is an excellent nonfiction title by this prolific and deeply insightful author. As we leave behind the stuff of the past that is mere burden, the relationships that bind rather than set us free, as we experience a change of heart, we develop the inner strength necessary to journey on the path to love, to make our search for love be a grand life adventure and a profound spiritual quest. Along the way we do find soul mates, true friends, life companions. We find communion. Another great wisdom gift that women offer to those who have not yet discovered its pleasures is the wisdom that it is better to know the joy of dancing in a circle of love than to dance alone. While a romantic partner and/or soul mate may bring us joy, we add that joy to love already shared with all those who are truly primary in our lives -- the circle of people to whom we turn, who turn to us -- knowing that they will find us eternally there. No matter how sweet the love between two people, we ask too much if we demand that this relationship and this one other person be 'everything.' The truth we hold close is that 'love is everything.' And because love has this power, it is always there within us, within those we love. It offers to us the possibility of ongoing communion."