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Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'
Be Not Afraid of Love: Lessons on Fear, Intimacy, and Connection by Mimi Zhu
4 reviews
mromie's review
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
In the vein of bell hooks, Mimi Zhu shines with one of the most moving and holistic memoirs about love. Zhu brings bell hooks’ “All About Love” to the language of today. Zhu’sraw vulnerability seeps through the pages. Zhu uses an intersectional and radical lens to talk about love on so many distinct yet interwoven layers: from self-love and healing, interdependency and the collective, processing grief - anger - and numbness as part and parcel to love, and many more. I find myself taking so many notes and hope to revisit this book.
“In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I learned that death is not an ending but a transfer of energy. As our tears send spirits to the afterlife, their energy is transmuted to new life. Our grief transforms too into an energy of love”
“These spaces are not pure; they are messy, complicated, hurtful, healing, and changing. The more we ostracize them, the more shame is created within us”
“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”
“God is found in our capacity to love one another. When I remember this, I am moved by my existence, and yours”
“Healing is not a path that leads to heavenly destination. Instead, it’s a path that brings me back to my wholeness. And it is a path that never ends… into an ongoing journey of gratitude, nurturance, and curiosity”
“The healthiest loving choices require us to unlearn the violent ideas of romance we have been conditioned to crave. When we choose to be in a relationship with another person, we are choosing to connect our sacred sources of love…choosing to act towards each other in ways that are kind, respectful, affectionate, and without the need for domination, ownership, and control”
“In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I learned that death is not an ending but a transfer of energy. As our tears send spirits to the afterlife, their energy is transmuted to new life. Our grief transforms too into an energy of love”
“These spaces are not pure; they are messy, complicated, hurtful, healing, and changing. The more we ostracize them, the more shame is created within us”
“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”
“God is found in our capacity to love one another. When I remember this, I am moved by my existence, and yours”
“Healing is not a path that leads to heavenly destination. Instead, it’s a path that brings me back to my wholeness. And it is a path that never ends… into an ongoing journey of gratitude, nurturance, and curiosity”
“The healthiest loving choices require us to unlearn the violent ideas of romance we have been conditioned to crave. When we choose to be in a relationship with another person, we are choosing to connect our sacred sources of love…choosing to act towards each other in ways that are kind, respectful, affectionate, and without the need for domination, ownership, and control”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Biphobia, Gaslighting, Racial slurs, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Violence
Moderate: Classism and Colonisation
abbeythomsen's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Rape, Colonisation, Grief, and Sexual assault
decaying's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Love exist as a constant in our lives. That, I can say with certainty. It exists in the relationships that we forge. The way we care for ourselves. It exists plastered in heart-shaped boxes of chocolates that seems to always fill the grocery aisles, looming throughout the dreaded month of February. Love is everywhere.
As someone who exists within the aromantic spectrum, I always have a never-ending crave to learn, explore, and understand what love is. It is always something that felt like I’m always on the cusp of understanding it, but never wholly. My understanding and relationship with love always felt fragmented. Like, I don’t believe anyone truly understand what love is nor any of us have any clue what we’re doing. Do we truly understand what love is? Is there a definitive meaning to it?
In many ways, Mimi Zhu’s “Be Not Afraid of Love” gave me a reassurance. It offers an understanding of love that is constantly expanding, with no means of an end nor a fixed shape. Love that transforms and transcends. There’s no definitiveness of what love is and that’s the most gracious thing about it; that we can find love in anything and everything. And I find that incredibly liberating. The book echoes familiar concepts and ideas from bell hooks’s “All About Love” that I find it difficult to separate the two. While hooks’s book suggests that we ought to look at love a little closer, Zhu’s book lets us know the different ways we can nurture and nourish it. The two complement each other incredibly well in that way.
In this book, Zhu spoke not only of her difficult experiences with past relationships. She also expanded on the various systemic issues that contributes to our convoluted and unfortunately, dysfunctional relationship with love. Her exploration is brimming with empathy and it’s difficult to not be swayed by the poignancy of her storytelling. It offered a level of consideration and understanding of the complicated ways people can be, but without at the expense of our well-being.
I really loved how Zhu tells her stories. The best way that I can describe her writing is that it is lovely. It’s hard to not think of love while I flicked through one chapter after the other. It has really expanded on my understanding on love with a spiritual perspective that I rarely ever considered. This book left me awestruck. This book tells me that there’s an endless possibility to love and there’s always room for me to be more loving in my life.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Grief, and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Misogyny, Racism, Rape, and Colonisation
Minor: Classism
imcourtneymarie's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
4.5
When I say be not afraid of love, I do not mean that we should rid ourselves of fear, but that we should sit with our fear, and learn to love it, too. I love my entire embodied being. Instead of pointing a trembling finger at love, I look closely and gently at my fear. I love myself the fulness of my feelings and I do not push myself away when difficult emotions arise… love reveals the truth to us because love is the truth. To be committed to love is to be committed to the infinite life of change.
There are a great many quotes I could pull from this book that made me weep or my heart sing. There were chapters where I felt the immediate sting of “hey, me too…”.
While Mimi’s story about abusive X and finding her ability to accept and feel love(d) again, if you’ve ever felt abused or neglected or unloved by anyone that’s “supposed to” love you, you may find strength and closure in Be Not Afraid Of Love. My X is familial and I found myself breathing along and internalizing much of what she said. Chapter 9 about miracles (not just of the religious kind) struck a particular chord.
I’m very glad I picked this one up. Can’t wait to share it with my therapist 🤪
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Sexual violence, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Sexual assault
Minor: Classism and Colonisation
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