3 out of 4 stars
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I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars.
When I found The Banned Book About Love online, it came with an author’s note about how controversial it was. After reading it, I can see why so many people would be upset with this book.
Scott Hughes published his nonfiction small booklet as a way to start a conversation. His repeated use of the words “I love Brock” draws a sense of anger from even the most emotionally controlled individuals. It makes you ask the question, “Who could possibly love such a horrible person?” This statement is the reason I continued to read this book. I needed to know what could possibly be the reason for loving such a person.
The answer was simple. The author talks about how we should have a love for all people no matter what. He states that he does not think he is innocent, nor does he think he should not be punished. It is about the state of our society and how much rage we vehemently spit out on social media, to no avail. He goes on to talk about the true subject of his book, hate. Hate help no one and wanting someone to suffer for something never solves any issues. While we “hate”, problems of the world are not solved, not even our own problems can be solved by this.
After reading the entire booklet, I absolutely love the message behind it, even if I was turned off from the book in the beginning. The sentence “I love Brock” does exactly what it should. It makes you question everything because it’s true, deep down inside, we all should love him. As the author says, it is an unconditional love. It doesn’t mean we should protect him or that we should believe he is innocent. It just means that we need to think first before our hate spewing outrage gets us into a spiral of rage. We need to, instead, focus on what can be done in general to prevent these situations. We need to be teaching people not to rape instead of just punishing the offenders.
I believe the author wrote what he wrote in an effort to create a conversation an to make people have that awkward discussion that no one wants to have. He created a moment where everyone who actually read the book has to look at themselves and say “I love Brock, too.”
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The Banned Book about Love
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