My girlfriend bought me some of Bell Hooks’ books for Christmas one year and I finally got around to reading them. My therapist will likely be super happy with the items I’ve picked and taken from Bell Hooks’ words, as she allows you to be very introspective and reflective. While each book has its own theme and focus, she takes in intersectional world views to show societal structure, how it has influenced us, and how we can better ourselves with this information.

The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
It was so timely to read this book after watching the Barbie movie. This book is for Kens, aka men, who are interested in learning how the patriarchy and societal structures have hindered and harmed men and boys. Through enforcing violence, setting unrealistic sexual expectations, and withholding love and affection, society does not give men the things they need to be full, empathetic, warm, sensitive people that all humans have the capacity to be. It’s a great read for anyone, not just men, although I can only imagine how seen men would feel after reading this.

All About Love: New Visions
This book focuses on love and relationships in many areas and attempts to show how our love patterns are rooted in our upbringing and society’s influence. I learned a lot and was able to be introspective about my own influences as well as choices in self love that I found very affirming. While it’s mostly written from a heterosexual perspective, especially children of heterosexual parents, it still recognizes the patterns and trends that are both helpful and harmful to having successful love in your love. Love is layered and in many facets of life, and this is a lovely guidebook.

Rock My Soul: Black People and Self Esteem
Okay, so this book admittedly was not written for me, but I still gained a lot of knowledge from reading it. There are focuses on so many aspects of life overall, such as relationships, work, addiction, family, spirituality, trauma, and more. The focus is obviously surrounding how these life events and society influence black people and their self-worth, which gave me a lot of insight and hopeful understanding. I appreciate the way that Bell Hooks breaks down patterns and trends in life that I may not have thought about, and I always appreciate her feminist approach to these ideas.

My only critique of Bell Hooks is that the LGBTQ+ perspective is often not one that she speaks on, but I find her to be such an expert on the things that she does speak about that it will not deter me from reading more of her work. I got a lot out of these three, so I will certainly be back for more.

Thanks for reading! (Last Updated: Oct 2023)