La volonté de changer

This is my introduction to Bell Hooks and I’m sad I’ve not engaged with her work earlier. She has a very clear pithy way of communicating ideas and I thoroughly resonate with her position of change arising from love and understanding (with love including the importance of holding people accountable). Perhaps I’m to rigid and new to the writing of theorists but as a scientist I do find it disconcerting when there isn’t a reference list. There were some key statements throughout that make claim to something that is feasibly researched but that she doesn’t cite anything. I have read a good deal of psychology literature so knew many of her claims to be true, but others I was interested by and they did not accompany a reference and it is hard to know what she is basing these claims on? Her previous body of writing? Experiences talking to many women? Or has she just read research so widely she knows this as a basic truth? Either way, it left me wishing for a bit more rigour to underpin her worthwhile thoughts and theory. I wonder perhaps if with this being a later work of hers, she no longer feels the need to establish key ideas she has already thoroughly broached in other books and so I’m a little “out of order” if one considers that valid manner to consume a thinkers literary body.

This is the kind of book that both articulates what you felt in an eloquent way, while also opening your eyes to things you haven't thought about that much. I feel that this is specially true if you're a man reading this.

I don't know much about "feminism for men" books; this was one of the few at the time of publishing.

The prose is beautiful. As I read it, scenes of my childhood and adolescence came to my mind, moments that I can perfectly recall that shaped my patriarchal understanding of what it is to be a man (and a woman). What we as men are encouraged to do or not to do.

As the book progresses, it questions my current understanding of relating to oneself and to others, aiming at challenging patriarchal values that are so harmful for everyone, regardless of gender.

Highly recommended for any man that considers themselves feminist. Before reading this book, I considered myself one. I still do, but this book held up a mirror in front of me, and with care and love pointed out the things that I need to work on to build a better, feminist, future.