bell hooks

All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all. Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame. For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.

New Visions

All About Love

— i appreciate how she breaks down & de-stigmatizes the common ideas of “love” that we as a society have adopted into our own definition of the word

— love is layered & complex; it takes examining our childhood experiences / reflecting on our values / respecting ourselves & others / aligning values with intention n action

— letting go of the ego & being open to accepting / giving love 

danielle del rosario

stephanie

The space of pur lack is also the space of possibility.

The desire to be powerful is rooted in the intensity of fear. Power gives us the illusion of having triumphed over fear, over our need for love.

Compassion opens the way for individuals to feel empathy for others without judgement. Judging others increases our alienation. When we judge we are less able to forgive. The absence of forgiveness keeps us mired in shame.

In the functional family self-esteem is learned & there is a balance between autonomy & dependency. 

By learning to love, we learn to accept change. Without change, we cannot grow. Our will to grow in spirit & truth is how we stand before life & death, ready to choose life.

The way we grieve is informed  by whether we know love.

To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.

...acceptance, the unconditional love that is the core of self love.

True! My experiences of truly loving friendships gave me the courage to 'risk' opening myself up to others, & love others through my actions despite the 'risk' of that love not being reciprocated equivalently. 

The experience of true love gives us the courage to risk.

[The] act of opening is a way of seeking love.

We fear that evaluating our needs & then carefully choosing partners will reveal that there is no one for us to love. Most of us prefer to have a partner that is lacking than no partner at all. What becomes apparent is that we may be more interested in finding a partner than in knowing love.

Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention & action.

Toni Morrison identifies the idea of romantic love as one "of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought." It's destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love with no will & no capacity to choose.

True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. 

When we are committed to doing the work of love we listen even when it hurts.

Unlike other movements for social change that require joining organisations & attending meetings l, we ca  begin the process of making community wherever we are.

...many if us seem community solely to escape the fear of bring alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.

True forgiveness requires that we understand the negative actions if another.

Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take anything away from us—we are not diminished.

Exactly. I always thought it sad how often I hear of women suddenly 'disappearing' from their friend group after marriage. Friendship is so important to maintain!

The more genuine our romantic loves the more we do not feel called upon to weaken or sever our ties with friends in order to strengthen ties with romantic partners.

...friendship is the place in which a great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love & caring community. Learning to love in friendships empowers us in ways that enable us to bring this love to other interactions with family or romantic bonds.

"The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet...we would all love to better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provacative and intensely personel, the renowned scholar, cultural critic, and feminist skewers our view of love as romance. In its place she offers a proactive new ethic for a people and a society bereft with lovelessness. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explode th question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for emotional connection and society's failure to provide a model for learning to love. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for the individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful affirmation of just how profoundly she can.

Meghan Navoy

i absolutely LOVED this book. one of my favorite books ever. I will definitely be re-reading this many times, highly recommend to everyone. a love centered society would be a real game changer

hooks walks the reader through her perspective on love — what it even is, how to foster it, and how to separate it from the distorted lens of patriarchy. My favorite part is when she talks about love in community and gender roles.

Midori Kobayashi

all my respect for bell hooks, something is really fucked in my head because the entire time i was reading this i was just rolling my eyes- 'really????' idk man maybe love isn't my cup of tea. the book might just be really phenomenal but not for me clearly. plus the discussions are wayy too heteronormative for my interest.

Rohini Anandamurugan

I'm very conflicted about this book. The author has made many thoughtful points about love and it's presence/absence in the society. There are definitely elements that I would be taking away from this book.

However, I did not like the following:
1. Victim blaming. Sorry, just no.
2. Speaking in absolutes when it comes to experiences men and women face. It would've been interesting if the author had also addressed the role love plays in raising them so differently. Without that, it feels like the author has just clubbed people into two binary sets of experiences.
3. An overdose of spirituality/God/Bible. I can understand if the author critiqued or spoke about the presence God has in society. But nope, the author discusses about specific verses in the Bible and then proceeds to talk about angels, etc etc. If it was relevant to the book, then it wasn't made sufficiently clear.

Steph Lodico

All About Love seems to me like the book that has to find you at the right time to be impactful. For me, this book was exactly what I needed. While I did not agree with everything hooks had to say (example: in a passing comment, namelessly shading Monica Lewinsky for having a sexual encounter with a man who was SEVERELY taking advantage of his authority; she did not note this power imbalance and instead condemned both of them which rubbed me the wrong way), this undeniably has provoked me think more deeply about a lot of meaningful issues more so than most any book has. 

I love how she tackles so many different forms of love (or rather lovelessness) that exist in our society. Love is so, so much more than romantic love. The most striking chapter to me was the one in which she posited that children lack civil rights and true advocates. Children are essentially property to parents, and unless parents are extremely over the line, any form of interference on the child’s behalf is seen as stepping on parents’ boundaries. While there are certainly times when people need to mind their own business, I thought her centering communal love, finding family in a community, was somewhat revolutionary for Western society. I would be really interested to read more about her thought process on how to make these notions more mainstream in our society.

bell hooks is very spiritual. While she does not necessarily advocate for organized religion, spirituality is obviously a large, large aspect of her philosophy on love. I enjoyed hearing her takes, but this isn’t for everyone. 

At one point, hooks says, “I left the relationship fearful that our culture was not yet ready to affirm mutual love between free women and free men.” She implied that this was her temporary thought process and she feels differently, and I wish she would have delved more into this issue because honestly my sentiments are exactly what she quoted. I really can’t point to any man/woman couple I know that I genuinely believe is equal or where either one is completely “free” from society’s gender conforming takes on love. Thinking of the progressive men in my circle, I can’t name one who I think is capable of completely honoring me as a woman because of societal messaging. Yes, at a point people need to take responsibility and unlearn things. But the nuances of this conversation are so silenced that I think unlearning/learning has its capacity limits. I think this will change over generations, as I think it already has changed over generations. What I also wished she would have expanded upon here is how this applies to non-heterosexual relationships. As others have noted, this book is extremely heteronormative. I get she’s writing from her own experience, but a) considering how observational she is I assume she pays attention to LGBTQ+ relationships in her circles, and b) since it’s largely philosophical as well I feel like she could have simply made the choice to incorporate how LGBTQ+ relationships fit into this gendered world. 

The only other thing I really wished for was more female & GNC voices. She started the book by saying that for a topic largely put on women’s shoulders, men do most of the writing about love. So I get why most people she cites are men. However, she said women are more commonly practitioners. I would have loved to see more anecdotal citations from women. She mostly either cited men or cited her own experience, and I think a lot of valuable information could have been added by including other women’s experiences - maybe I will see more of this in the next two books of her love series. 

Ultimately, I thought the preface + introduction set me up for a slightly different book than I read and I became less enthused as the chapters went on. But I feel like I have come out of it with a lot of important questions to think about as I approach any relationship, even with myself, and I think bell hooks did a really great job with a mostly ignored conversation.

Ana Hein

As a testament to Hooks's ideas, I feel like I've heard a lot of this before, which shows that she was ahead of her time--but the downside is I feel like I didn't really learn a lot that was new.

This book is a must read for those of us in our 20s who are lost. bell hooks radical opinion on love transforms how you see love and relationships in your everyday life. Her book made me reflect on what kind of love I’m seeking for myself and how I can show that love to others as a path way towards freedom. 

Lydia Enge

Eva Decker

Reema

Bell hooks' subjective view on what love is in the modern world is extremely tethered (and rightfully so) to the culture surrounding her homeland. As someone who grew up and continues to experience a culture that is deeply engrossed in connection, affection, and the importance of family, it is difficult to relate to what she is saying. 

She also has a very fundamentalist view on gender which rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it is all a bit out of touch, or maybe I'm not the target demographic.

All in all I appreciate and respect the bravery and vulnerability involved in writing this book.

Always worth reading and reflecting on. Changed the way I viewed love and my relationships. Very insightful.

Sydney Alston

This one is filled with lots of valuable lessons & reminders on actively allowing love to be a driving force in your life. Even if I don't completely agree with all of hooks' visions presented here, her words encouraged deep personal reflections, which is probably the most valuable thing I can hope to obtain from my readings. I'd recommend this one to everyone & anyone. 

Alyse Lui

I have already read a lot of other more contemporary essays in this vein and I think that might be coloring my perception of this book, which is very much a product of it's time. 

It's nice in a "let's look through this lens for a bit" way, but it's also super heteronormative and struck me as pretty gender-role conforming, which surprised me, given what I had heard from others about Bell Hooks. 

This was the first work I have read from Bell Hooks and it's okay, just okay. It didn't blow me away or live up to the hype (for me at least) that I had coming into this reading. I enjoyed the perspectives and also how she talked about the absence of love in childhood leading her and impacting her search for love as an adult. 

Things have definitely changed a lot since this was written, and I found myself very conscious of that while reading. Conscious of where I disagreed because I was making space for non-gender conforming or queer concepts of love. Or conscious of the spaces that have opened up for people to grow that maybe were not as easily accessible when this was written. 

Reading this was an exercise. I would rate it 2 stars, but the fact that it's kept me thinking about it and considering it for this long after I have finished reading it got me to give 3 stars. 

It might be a useful starting point for those who haven't started exploring the concept of love yet.

This book truly changed the way I view love. I hope to carry the messages with me through the rest of my life. Cannot recommend enough

Caroline Shah

The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation,” All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.

Stephanie Ridiculous

An excellent resource for starting conversations, self reflection, and evaluating the relationships in all spheres of your life. There were a few things that were a miss for me but overall really good & there were some profoundly relevant observations/thoughts from hooks here. Definitely worth the read, and better yet- worth reading with someone important to you!

Maggie Gordon

I started reading All About Love thinking that I would have my mind blown. After all, this is bell hooks writing on love and social justice; what could be more awesome? However, I quickly discovered that this was not one of hook’s better pieces. Had I turned in a piece like this in one of my classes, I would have had it returned by my professors covered in red ink declaring the fact that I was making all sorts of assertions without a whole lot of proof. 

The main idea of hook’s book is strong. She argues that love is a necessary idea and emotion to cultivate as human beings and social justice advocates. After all, love is at the foundation of social cohesion. However, hooks founds many of her ideas on authors of self-help books and supposed “common sense knowledge”. I found neither very compelling or particularly interesting. 

It should also be noted that hooks is a Christian though she is attempting to write for everyone. Unfortunately, for those with a non-Christian background, or at least a religious background, this book may contain assertions that fall flat. For example, at one point hooks claims that all people believe in some greater power even though this is patently false for most atheists and agnostics. And while I can completely understand that hooks finds a lot of strength and beauty in religion, her conversations about angels and spirituality meant very little to me personally, and often got in the way of my understanding of her points. I would have preferred had she had not attempted to portray this as a book for everyone, and if she had been more honest with her Christian focus. 

Overall, this book had potential, but I really did not enjoy it. I would like to warn other potential readers that this work is far less rigorous that other hook pieces, and to go in knowing that it is heavily founded on faith-based arguments (which are totally fine as long as these are something you can find beauty and reason in). Some chapters are stronger than others, so you may still find something to enjoy. In the end, I did end up really appreciating a lot of what she said in her chapter on children and love, so one's mile may vary as they say.

Angel Martinez

True to its title, bell hooks’ critically acclaimed analysis of the most misunderstood concept on the planet is nothing more than a mere vision. I don’t know if it’s just the cynicism talking. I understand the concept of revolutionary optimism—admire it, even. How can we fight for a better world when we can’t even imagine what it looks like? 

But as a result, she ends up glossing over harsh realities (e.g. the employment crisis, toxic masculinity/aggression in relationships, and healing from deep-seated trauma) and even speculating about outcomes with obvious motives (e.g. why Bill Clinton behaved the way he did) in favor of a very “live laugh love” approach to systemic issues embedded in our capitalist society. The worst part about this (I’d like to think, unintentional) condescension, this underestimation of the problems she elaborates on is that it’s not even anything new. I’m very much open to giving her other work a try though: I doubt that she would have left the imprint she has on the cultural zeitgeist if she didn’t have much better texts to her name.

雪 xue

some great stuff in here but was expecting more novelty and/or rigor! i think most of the content in here has been parroted in the media that i tend to consume, but to be sure, this was way ahead of its time when it was published in the 90s

i agree with hooks that love by definition should be nurturing one’s (for me, secular) spiritual growth but the book was surprisingly much more didactic than expected? still, the last chapter on angels as divine guardians of the soul was enchanting… couldn’t stop visualizing angels in their biblically accurate form though

Angbeen Abbas

a little hokey in parts, but overall a pleasant read

Francis Buggey

howl

the book was insightful, but it does feel redundant at certain points, and there were several parts i couldn’t fully agree with because of how black-and-white it felt. overall i enjoyed it, though. 

elliot comanescu

Abigail Schreider

El amor solo puede existir, si no existe la voluntad de poder sobre un otro

Marlee Stark

I so badly wanted to like this book. I just didn’t. Maybe for a different time in life. bell hooks is a beautiful writer nonetheless.

Athena Eloy

This book radically shifted the way I thought about love. I really believe this book could change the world. Required reading for all men who love women--but also required reading for anyone who loves or wants to walk an ethical path of love. Really incredible.

All About Love New Visions

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