Communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks

4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) – Worth It!

There are authors who deserve to be read and bell hooks has been on my list for years and as soon as I started “Communion: The Female Search for Love” I knew that I had waited too long.  hooks writing, arguments and understandings are worth reading and sharing.

bell hooks has been a name swirling around me since college and in these last five to ten years she has come up time and time again in the multiple Black Feminists I read such as adrienne maree brown, Brittney Cooper, and Mikki Kendall. In reading “Communion” I more fully understood the foundation hooks has had on Black Feminist thought and the conversations she has been having about race, heteronormativity and patricarch have served as the building blocks for today’s ongoing conversation in both academia and the larger social conversation.  

hooks offers a comprehensive deconstruction of the continued heteronormative roles found in marriage, the emblematic relationship for receiving and giving love in a patriarchal society. “Communion” was published 20 years ago, prior to the beginning of my marriage and yet her descriptions and understanding of the roles and emotional toll within heteronormative relationships ring true. I can hear the echoes of her argument through the voices of a newer generation of writers, yet hooks’ voice kept me engaged and provided a particular reflection to digest. 

This book, apparently the third in a series she wrote on love, was my first hooks but it will not be my last and I plan to share her writing and thoughts with the women in my life searching for love.

Happy Reading!
Hannah

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