Deeply nuanced and personal, as expected from bell hooks. She is such a great thinker, I'm always impressed by the different perspectives she brings to her writing. She connects quotes from her own personal reading to mass media to socialization to religion to politics. Because of this, she can sometimes veer off into things that seem like far stretches or conclusions that were jumped to, but as someone who doesn't believe in the phrase "It's not that deep", I always enjoy her analyses on unexpected topics.

I appreciated the way she broke down masculinity, and how she lays out the way patriarchy damages men, which in turn damages women. It's a sort of top-down approach that usually gets missed; every feminist knows the patriarchy damages women, but most people don't think about how it damages men as well. It's also clearly written with so much love, for men and women, and in that way, bell hooks lives up to practicing what she preaches.

Despite all the good I think it offers, I felt like it only scratched the surface of masculinity, but hooks gives us a great starting point, a new lens to apply when talking and thinking about masculinity. It is a product of its time though and therefore lacks a more diverse perspective regarding gender identity and sexuality; trans men, gay men, lesbians, and gender non-conforming men are all interesting pieces of the puzzle when talking about masculinity and patriarchy.