Communion: The Female Search for Love

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According to the author, a woman’s search for love, not equality, is at the helm of all things. Freedom only comes when she realizes her value and appreciates herself instead of waiting for substantiation from a man. I liked this book even though I don’t think it was as groundbreaking or tightly argued as her books The Will to Change or All About Love. For the first 70% of Communion, I felt that bell hooks made several strong and interesting points about women, gender, and relationships: that women are taught to search for love in romantic relationships, that women are also capable of perpetuating sexism and patriarchy, and that men who may advocate for racial justice or even gender equality may still enact sexism in contexts such as sexual relationships. I agree with other reviewers who state that hooks generalizes her points a bit much at times. While I didn’t mind that rhetorical technique when she used it either more accurately or more sparingly in her other books, in Communion it stood out to me more in a negative way, perhaps because I also found that her points blurred together and were a little discursive within chapters at times. COMMITMENT IS THE GROUND OF OUR BEING THAT LETS US MAKE MISTAKES, BE FORGIVEN, AND TRY AGAIN (p. 216)

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed? While never quite deeming it so, hooks recognises the limits to loving, and does not mean love to be an endless crusade for those who choose to practice it in vain pursuit of those who are not willing to heal past wounds and nurture love. Once we recognise that abuse and domination are antithetical to love, we can also recognise that “the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way” (p. 43). All About Love manages to offer a kind resolution to the pain carried within by those among us who submit to endless suffering in their effort to love. For hooks, loving is about assuming responsibility about causing pain, and in the absence of such accountability, it “is a gesture of self-love … to break their commitment and move on” (p. 49).We continue to put in place the anti-sexist thinking and practice which affirms the reality that females can achieve self-actualization and success without dominating one another.” Given our early obsessions with seducing and pleasing others to affirm our worth, we lose ourselves in the search to be accepted, included, desired. Our talk about love has heretofore primarily been a talk about desire. For the most part, the feminist movement did not change female obsession with love, nor did it offer us new ways to think about love. It told us that we were better off if we stopped thinking about love, if we could live our lives as though love did not matter, because if we did not do so we were in danger of becoming a member of a truly despised female category: the woman who loves too much. The irony, of course, is that most of us were not loving too much; we were not loving at all. What we were was emotionally needy, desperate for the recognition (whether from male or female partners) that would prove our worth, our value, our right to be alive on the planet, and we were willing to do anything to get it. As females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing—yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves. elinize ağır, teorik, terimler içeren, anlamaya çalışırken yorulacağınız bir kitap almıyorsunuz bence. yazarın da buna dikkat ettiğini düşünüyorum açıkçası. kadınların okurken eğitim, kültür, birikim seviyesi çok önemli olmadan anlayabileceği kitaplar yazmaya çalışıyor ki kitaplarında yer yer kendisinin de şikayetlendiği "teoride iyiydi güzeldi, yaşarken hiç öyle olmadı, kimse feminist pratiğin günlük hayatta nasıl uygulanacağından bahsetmedi" minvalinde bahsettiği kısımları var. bu yüzden kendisini bu kadar seviyor olabilirim. kendisinin de kitapta bahsettiği " hetoroseksüel bir feminist kadının erkek partneri ile yaşadığı cinsel alandaki özgürlük, hayır deme hakkı üzerine yazılmış makale bulamazsınız ama bu sıkıntıları yaşayan feminist kadınlar vardı ama kimse bahsetmedi" gibi durumları ve buna benzer örnekleri anlatarak hayat pratiğinin içinden anlatmaya çalışması feminizmi benim için değerli kılıyor kitaplarını ve kendisini.

This book is testimony, a celebration of the joy women find when we restore the search for love to its rightful, heroic place at the center of our lives. We long to be loved and we long to be free. Communion tells us how we fulfill that longing. Sharing the pain, the struggle, the work women do to overcome our fear of abandonment and of loss, the ways we push past the wounded passion to open our hearts, Communion urges us to come again and again to the place where we can know joy, to come and celebrate, to join the circle of love. One Aging to Love, Loving to Age The words of bell hooks are intimate and universal at the same time. She should have been here for many years to come, and the only comfort now is that her words will be here always. Imani Perry 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.

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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." really really enjoyed this one. i realized i have read basically zero books about feminism???? fail! Patriarchy has always seen love as women’s work, degraded and devalued labor. And it has not cared when women failed to learn how to love, for patriarchal men have been the most willing to substitute care for love, submission for respect. We did not need a feminist movement to let us know that females are more likely to be concerned with relationships, connection, and community than are males. Patriarchy trains us for this role. We do need a feminist movement to remind us again and again that love cannot exist in a context of domination, that the love we seek cannot be found as long as we are bound and not free.

She was a teacher and I imagine she recognized early that it is through empathetic connection that students really learn, especially when the subject matter is dealing with the really tough stuff within ourselves and our society. May more like her carry on. Evangeline Lawson To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. When I rebelled against my parents. . .I did not do so happily. I wanted and needed their support. Going against their wishes was frightening and psychologically upsetting" (p. 148) i just loved how she talk about the importance of mutual love built on respect, responsibility, accountability, etc. because care alone is not enough. also one of my fav quotes “Making a relationship “work” is not the same as “creating love.”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 Worum geht es? Bell Hooks befasst sich im Buch mit dem Thema Liebe. Liebe in all ihren Facetten: Selbstliebe, romantische Liebe, Liebe unter Schwestern und unter anderem das Verhältnis von Liebe zu Dingen wie Arbeit und Macht wird ebenfalls thematisiert. Die Abhandlung der Themen passiert dabei immer vor dem Hintergrund des Feminismus.

Idea of a "coming out process" to yourself for realizing/believing/identifying yourself as straight, sharing same process as those who had to consciously come out as queer (p. 35) There was a lot less I disagreed with in this book, and I could see she made more of an attempt to be LGBTQ+ inclusive (although weak and insufficient).Communion: The Female Search for Love shares our struggle to know true love and our triumphs. Gathering together wisdom gleaned from women who have come to know love in midlife, women who often wandered lost in a desert of the heart through most of our teen years and on into our late twenties, Communion lets us hear the knowledge of women over thirty and beyond who as seekers on love’s path discovered along the way new visions, healing insights, and remembered rapture.