I appreciate the compassion bell hooks has for men in this book. She strongly emphasizes the ways in which patriarchy hurts men, too, and advocates for reaching out to them, not closing them off. I also thought she did a great job pointing out the ways in which some women prop up the patriarchy as well, with their children and with their partners.

However, I have the same complaints about this book that I have about many nonfiction books - this was organizationally odd and very repetitive. The chapter titles didn’t always seem to correspond to the contents of the chapters or were so vague as to be unhelpful. There was also a lot of overlap between chapters and similar ground covered. This book isn’t described as a collection of essays or speeches collected after the fact, but it has that feel. After the first few chapters you’ve basically gotten the message.

Not mad at the message, but received what there was to receive early on.