The Will to Change
Men, Masculinity, and Love
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4.6 • 159 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From New York Times bestselling author, feminist pioneer, and cultural icon bell hooks, a timelessly necessary treatise on how patriarchy and toxic masculinity hurts us all, with a new introduction by poet Ross Gay.
Feminist writing did not tell us about the deep inner misery of men.
Everyone needs to love and be loved—including men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways in which patriarchal culture keeps them from understanding themselves. In The Will to Change, bell hooks provides a compassionate guide for men of all ages and identities to understand how to be in touch with their feelings, and how to express versus repress the emotions that are a fundamental part of who we are.
With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. The Will to Change “creates space for men to acknowledge their traumas and heal—not only for their sake, but for the sake of everyone in their lives” (BuzzFeed).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A companion to We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (Forecasts, Nov. 10), hooks's 23rd book for adults is a fierce, quirky denunciation of patriarchy and a clarion call to the uncommitted to align themselves with visionary radical feminism. In 12 slim chapters, hooks examines the stages of a man's life, from babyhood through boyhood to the teenage years into manhood. She finds patriarchy plays a role in most socio-sexual ills, as boys and men seek alienating sex as a substitute for the love that often seems, because of demands on families that destroy them or keep them from forming, unavailable to men: "Sex, then, becomes for most men a way of self-solacing. It is not about connecting to someone else but rather releasing their own pain." The men who can lead us out of patriarchal chains are "men of color from poor countries, men who live in exile, men who have been victimized by imperialist male violence" the Dalai Lama for example. While she calls Will Smith films such as Men in Black and Independence Day tools of the patriarchy, hooks saves her big guns for J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, scornfully exposing them as foisted on us by "rich white American men" and no more than updated version of the British schoolboy books that fueled the fantasies of Victoria's empire. A better book to buy for children, she suggests, might be her own recent Be Bop Buzz. Hooks is always readable, but her takes on mass media here have a retro ring to them.
Customer Reviews
Necessary
This book is such an eye opener
Must read for any man‼️
As a young man, this book offered so much perspective into so many things. Whether it be the impact the males/females in my life had on my masculinity or the influence society had on my masculinity, this book provided me the hows and whys it happened. More importantly, it provided me the fixes. Honestly feel l’m a better man, a better lover, and overall a better person after experience this book
bell hooks is "deep"
Her works is one of the best that I have ever read. I love watching her public dialogues with other scholars/writers. Her work is so great, that I want to keep her writings and knowledge as a secret. Loll. ( I do spread the awareness of bell hooks and encourage people to watch and listen on YouTube and read-about) I love her saying of: "white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy" and I like to use that slogan every time I am having a conversation about class, race, gender and sexuality. I think her work should be required reading for every student in college and school.