When the environment you live in and know most intimately does not place value on loving, a spiritual life provides a place of solace and renewal. - bell hooks

Our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting.

Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.

Friedan was a principal shaper of contemporary feminist thought. Significantly, the one-dimensional perspective on women's reality presented in her book became a marked feature of the contemporary feminist movement. Like Friedan before them, white women who dominate feminist discourse today rarely question whether or not their perspective on women's reality is true to the lived experiences of women as a collective group. Nor are they aware of the extent to which their perspectives reflect race and class biases, although there has been a greater awareness of biases in recent years. abounds in the writings of , reinforcing and negating the possibility that women will bond politically across ethnic and racial boundaries. Past feminist refusal to draw attention to and attack suppressed the link between race and class. Yet class structure in American society has been shaped by the of white supremacy; it is only by analyzing racism and its function in capitalist society that a thorough understanding of class relationships can emerge. Class struggle is inextricably bound to the struggle to end racism.