A Book that Found Me on the Road: communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks

A solo drive, a midlife reckoning, and the radical work of choosing myself

I came to Communion: The Female Search for Love because of Whitney Alese, a Philadelphia content creator who did far more than recommend a book.

When J.D. Vance announced a memoir with the same title as bell hooks’ 2002 book, Whitney made a deliberate choice. Rather than center her energy on opposing his work, she redirected readers toward bell hooks.

Whitney Alese helped catalyze a reader movement. She invited people to buy the book, borrow it, search for it, request it from libraries and bookstores, read it together, and talk about it. Thousands of readers responded, and independent bookstores helped carry the motion forward. She also created a free online book club that attracted more than 5,000 people.

Her invitation became a movement.

Independent bookstores joined in. Sales of Communion reportedly rose by 1,000 percent. The book reached No. 1 on the independent bestseller list and No. 12 on The New York Times paperback bestseller list, more than two decades after its first publication.

I want to credit Whitney directly because I might not have found this particular book at this particular moment without her. Her work is also a powerful example of what can happen when we turn our attention away from outrage and use it to restore a woman’s work to the cultural foreground.

I listened to Communion while taking a solo road trip from Brooklyn, NY to the Hudson River Valley.

I became single earlier this Summer. This is the first time I have said that publicly, and it is all I want to say about it here.

What I do want to talk about is what happens when a woman finds herself at the beginning of a new chapter and every signpost seems to point her back toward herself.

I was making a literal journey alone while bell hooks accompanied me through another kind of journey: a woman’s search for love, freedom, pleasure, wholeness, and herself.

I believe in coincidences, but I also believe some books find us when we are finally ready to hear them.

bell hooks was approaching 50 when Communion was published. She was writing from midlife, looking back at what feminism and sexual liberation had given women, but also at what they had failed to change inside our most intimate relationships. She writes about bodies, sexuality, aging, romantic partnerships, friendship, loneliness, self-love, and all the ways women are taught to surrender pieces of ourselves in order to be chosen.

This is one of the bravest, most personal, tell-it-like-it-is books about womanhood and feminism I have encountered in a very long time. It felt like being invited into the deeply personal thinking of an extraordinary Black feminist writer who refused to separate the political from the intimate. And did it ever meet me where I am.

As I got through this Summer, every signpost seems to be pointing me in the same direction:

Love yourself.
Explore yourself.
Choose yourself.
Become the expert of yourself.

Not as consolation prizes until another person arrives. Not as preparation for being chosen again. As the work and wonder of a life that belongs to me.

Even the title carries so many meanings. Communion as coming together. Communion as communication. Communion with other women, with our bodies, with our histories, and with the parts of ourselves we may have abandoned while searching for love.

I had already read All About Love, which is also a beautiful book, but I did not realize it was the first book in bell hooks’ “Love Song to the Nation” trilogy. Salvation: Black People and Love is the second, and Communion: The Female Search for Love is the third.

Communion reached me in a different place. Perhaps because I am in a different place.

Thankfully, bell hooks is not difficult to find. She wrote over 30 books, and YouTube holds an extraordinary archive of her lectures, interviews, and conversations, and I have started making my way through them. I have Salvation in my Libro.fm and also The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love.

I often save time before bed to listen to great thinkers or books. I also listen while traveling, which is how Communion accompanied me to and from Brooklyn to the Hudson River Valley. There is something intimate about ending the day with someone else’s ideas in your ears, letting them challenge you, comfort you, and keep working on you while the rest of the world grows quiet.

bell hooks may be gone (1952-2021), but her voice is still here. What an extraordinary legacy of guidance she left us. And what a beautiful bit of justice that the controversy surrounding another book with the same title led thousands of readers back to bell hooks’ work.

Thank you, Whitney Alese, for pointing me toward that door.

Read these books and listen to bell speak; I love her voice and her direct, brilliant way of discussing the most important motions of what it means to be human.

Loving yourself is not the waiting room where you sit until somebody else chooses you. It is the continuing practice of knowing, exploring, protecting, and becoming yourself.

Protect your queendom.
Press play.

The Sample

The spark for this piece was Whitney Alese’s campaign to return bell hooks’ Communion to the forefront.

Whitney didn't ask people to be angry about J.D. Vance publishing a book with the same title. She gave them something meaningful to do: buy bell hooks’ book, borrow it, search for it, request it, read it, and discuss it.

More than 5,000 people joined the free online book club she created. Independent bookstores supported the effort. Sales reportedly increased by 1,000 percent, and Communion returned to national bestseller lists more than two decades after its publication.

That is community organizing. That is cultural preservation. That is how to refuse to let an important writer’s voice disappear.

Sometimes resistance looks like placing the right woman’s book back into someone’s hands.

Track Notes

This piece is about:

• Encountering bell hooks at exactly the right moment

• Becoming single again in midlife

• Refusing to treat self-love as preparation for the next relationship

• Exploring the parts of ourselves we may have surrendered to be chosen

• Preserving the voices and work of women

   

Liner Notes

What I’m reading

All About Love: New Visions is the first book in bell hooks’ “Love Song to the Nation” trilogy.

Salvation: Black People and Love is the second.

Communion: The Female Search for Love is the third.

Where I found the books

I bought All About Love at Frenchmen Art & Books in New Orleans in October 2023.

I bought Communion through Bookshop.org in August 2026. And I’m listening to Salvation on Libro.FM.

What I’m listening to

I am making my way through the many bell hooks lectures, interviews, and conversations preserved on YouTube. Watching and hearing her speak adds another dimension to the work. Her humor, warmth, curiosity, and candor are all there.

Next Track

Salvation: Black People and Love.

I did not know I had entered a trilogy when I bought All About Love. Now I want to follow the full journey.

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