Acclaimed visionary and intellectual bell hooks began her exploration of the meaning of love in American culture with the bestselling All About Love: New Visions. Here she continues her love song to the nation in the groundbreaking and soul-stirring Salvation: Black People and Love.Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships and marriage in Black life, the prose and poetry of our most revered artists and leaders, the liberation movements of the 1950s,… More >>
Salvation: Black People and Love
Salvation: Black People And Love, by Bell Hooks is the most insightful book I’ve read about where and how love is nurtured, cultivated,and obscured in Black life.
Bell Hooks as a cultural/social critic and intellectual, is a a gift to the African American community, as well to all those who wish to deeply understand, the African American experince. Her insights born of experince, makes her analysis that much more relevant, in excavating the deep terrain of the social fabric in which love plays a central element in Black life; both in a religious and social way through out the experince of African Americans on the shores of the United states.
Bell Hooks is gifted, with a laser like mind, in unearthing the truths around the issues in which the theme of love has been paramount in shaping African American life. What I love about her writing is she is unafraid to speak to the hard and difficult truths concerning the failing of the African American community, as well as the larger society in which these failings take place.
As a Black feminist she is able to deconstruct the role of patriarchy as well as white supremacy, and it’s corrosive affects on the black community and how these elements impacts us all.
Bell Hooks brings a intellectual vigor as well as compassion to her writings that i feel makes her a stand out singular voice of her generation, and is a must read for those that seek to understand some of the social currents that have shaped the African American people.
She is generous as well as inclusive, having a chapter (ten) called embracing gayness-unbroken circles, she leaves no one out, thus proving she is truly a person who cherishes and loves ALL who represents the African Diaspora in America.
Rating: 5 / 5
What can I say? bell hooks does it again and if the issue of black love is holding you back from buying this book please reconsider. This book speaks to everyone.
Rating: 5 / 5
Perhaps moreso than her other books, Salvation speaks directly to men with both love and honesty. bell hooks is, as always, respectful without sugarcoating hard truths. This is another must-have for African-American family bookshelves and for singles alike. Particularly refreshing is her refusal to discuss romantic love separately from the needs for both self-love and racial uplift.
Her observations are wise. Her grasp of history is absolute. Her ideas stimulate intelligent and loving thought, conversation, and action. Read this book.
Rating: 5 / 5
An excellent book that every black person should read at least twice a year or more.
This book made me realise my own precious sense of self as a black woman.
The awfulness of how negative and damaging a childhood black people can have.
It can ruin self-esteem making a lot of us feel angry, critical negative
and constantly putting ourselves down or dissing other black people all the time.
I can relate to all the many years of damage that black fathers especially can do.
They descend on the home like a great black cloud or an ogre with their controlling ways, negativity, and various forms of abuse. A black child can feel such and despair struggling to appeal to often disinterested parents who are usually at loggerheads themselves. Where your best just isn’t good enough and often our own black relatives are our worst enemies. Constantly finding fault instead of a balance of praise and constructive criticism.
It made me especially upset to read about the guy in prison who suddenly found compassion for his other inmates.
but is trapped on death row.
But there is great hope. We have to look in the mirror and constantly remind ourselves of our own magnificence and
Firmly keep our goals in sight and achieve them as quickly as possible at times keeping them to ourselves until they materialise.
Relate to friends and family who accentuate the positive in you and steer clear from those who don’t.
Be firm and take no nonsense from relatives who always seek to be critical and damaging in their influence and
often expecting you to explain yourself. WHAT FOR????
Flee from relationships where the other person tries to press your buttons all the time. This is neither respect or real love!!
As black people we should read more and be much more pro-active in what we wish to achieve and want our lives to reflect.
God Willing.
Rating: 5 / 5
I bought Salvation hoping Ms. hooks would give definitive ways to address the problems we are having in the Black community. It was informative and somewhat repetitive. Her feminist view came through and in part I disagree with some of her feminist views. In our search for equality, we as women, black women are still left out. Just as the civil rights movement let doors open we closed doors on our own selves when it was unnecessary.
Like any movement, there is a fallout and backlash. Ms. hooks addressed some valid points, such as Love being the answer to our problems in the Black community. However, she gave no real steps, nothing concrete that can be taken into the community and used. We have talked and talked out our problems and even addressed some solutions. Now we need definitive steps and even examples to lead us out of the sex wars between our people.
Rating: 2 / 5