hooks analyzes the role of community in loving practice. At the beginning of the chapter, she states, “there is no better place to learn to learn the art of loving than community” (129). M. Scott Peck, a writer hooks references several times throughout the book, defines community as “the coming together of a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other” and “whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure” (129).

American society propagates and elevates images of the nuclear family: a mother, a father, and one or two children. hooks fights against this dominant imagery by stating that loving families come in many different formulations. What’s more, even individuals who find love within a nuclear family also rely on the larger community around them and on their extended kin. However, hooks writes, “Capitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin” (130). By siloing individuals into nuclear family units that mirror autocratic structures, the citizenry becomes more accepting of abuses of power, both within families and from authoritarian forces outside families.

hooks recognizes that people can find community in many different areas of life.