Name: antonia maria wagner she/they's review of All About Love by bell hooks
Item: All About Love
Rating: 4.5
Author: antonia maria wagner she/they

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

angel abad cesa 

Everything you should but don’t want to hear. This book is so simple but you can’t help but make it’s points change you, because even if you don’t like it, it’s so unbearably right.

Mara D Alo Fonseca

Knowing how to be solitary is a central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. 

this is........................ exactly how i feel but it still hurt my feelings :')

Kamu Pancholi

Somewhere along the way, in that passage from girlhood to womanhood, I learned females really had nothing serious to teach the world about love.

When the asleep body, numb and deadened to the world of the senses, awakens, it is a resurrection that reveals to us that love is stronger than death.

Our first home in the womb is also a grave where we await the coming of life. 

Living with awareness and clarity of mind and heart we are able to embrace the realization of our dying in a manner that allows us to live more fully because we know death is always with us. 

As long as we are afraid to risk we cannot know love. 

"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.

“I think love is really happening when we give to somebody, not when we take.” — Kim Namjoon

The mutual practice of giving and receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love. A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers—the experience of knowing we always belong.

We can show respect for love. To save our planet we can stop thoughtless waste. We can recycle and support ecologically advanced survival strategies. We can celebrate and honor communalism and interdependency by sharing resources. All these gestures show a respect and a gratitude for life. When we value the delaying of gratification and take responsibility for our actions, we simplify our emotional universe. Living simply makes loving simple. The choice to live simply necessarily enhances our capacity to love. It is the way we learn to practice compassion, daily affirming our connection to a world community.

To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity, and the will to cooperate), we have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way. Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, allowing it to govern and inform how we think and act, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone.

Listening does not simply mean we hear other voices when they speak but that we also learn to listen to the voice of our own hearts as well as inner voices.

Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love.

When we value the delaying of gratification and take responsibility for our actions, we simplify our emotional universe. Living simply makes loving simple. The choice to live simply necessarily enhances our capacity to love. It is the way we learn to practice compassion, daily affirming our connection to a world community.

Letting go of material desires may compel us to enter the space where our emotional wants are exposed.

When the practice of love invites us to enter a place of potential bliss that is at the same time a place of critical awakening and pain, many of us turn our backs on love. 

Significantly the combination of the lust for material wealth and the desire for immediate satisfaction are he signs that this materialism has become addictive. The need for instant gratification is a component of greed. This same politics of greed is at play when folks seek love. They often want fulfllment immediately. Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment.

Being aware enables us to critically examine our actions to see what is needed so that we can give care, be responsible, show respect and indicate willingness to learn.

To receive the gift, we must first understand that "there is no fear in love." But we do fear and fear keeps us from trusting in love.

Laura Mei

A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act. Spiritual life is first and foremost about commitment to a way of thinking and behaving that honors principles of inter-being and interconnectedness. When I speak of the spiritual, I refer to the recognition within everyone that there is a place of mystery in our lives where forces that are beyond human desire or will alter circumstances and/or guide and direct us. When we choose to lead a spirit-filled life, we recognize and celebrate the presence of transcendent spirits. Some people call this presence soul, God, the Beloved, higher consciousness, or higher power. Still others say that this force is what it is because it cannot be named. To them it is simply the spirit moving in and through us. A commitment to spiritual life necessarily means we embrace the eternal principle that love is all, everything, our true destiny. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love.

In solitude we find the place where we can truly look at ourselves and shed the false self. Loneliness is one of the most universal sources of human suffering today. No friend or lover, no partner, no community or commune will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness. We put those feelings to rest by embracing our solitude, allowing divine spirit to reveal itself there. As author Henri Nouwen writes: "The difficult road is the road of conversion, the conversion from loneliness into solitude. Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into fruitful solitude. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community." Learning how to sit in stillness and quietude can be the first step toward knowing comfort in aloneness.

Living consciously means we think critically about ourselves and the world we live in. We dare to ask ourselves the basic questions who, what, when, where, and why. Answering these questions usually provides us with a level of awareness that enlightens. To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals — to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be — and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know. To live consciously we have to engage in critical reflection about the world we live in and know most intimately. We can successfully do this only by cultivating awareness. Being aware enables us to critically examine our actions to see what is needed so that we can give care, be responsible, show respect, and indicate a willingness to learn.

Whether we learn how to love ourselves or not will depend on the presence of a loving environment. Self-love cannot flourish in isolation. It is no easy task to be self-loving. Simple axioms that make self-love sound easy only make matters worse. It leaves many people wondering why, if it is so easy, they continue to be trapped by feelings of low self-esteem or self-hatred. Using a working definition of love that tells us it is the action we take on behalf of our own or another's spiritual growth provides us with a beginning blueprint for working on the issue of self-love. When we see love as a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, we can work on developing these qualities or, if they are already a part of who we are, we can learn to extend them to ourselves. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.

There is nothing that creates more confusion about love in the minds and hearts of children than unkindness or cruelty meted out by the grown-ups they have been taught they should love and respect. Such children learn early on to question the meaning of love, to yearn for love even as they doubt it exists. Being hurt by parenting adults rarely alters a child's desire to love and be loved by them. Among grown-ups who were wounded in childhood, the desire to be loved by uncaring parents persists, even when there is a clear acceptance of the reality that this love will never be forthcoming.

To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense. Breaking through this denial is always the first step in uncovering our longing to be honest and clear. Lies and secrets burden us and cause stress. When we hear another person's thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are. It is harder to be manipulative. To be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most important, we affirm the value of truth telling.

antonia maria wagner she/they

florrr

I absolutely loved this book. This is the first non fiction book I've successfully finished reading and throughout found the book thought provoking, insightful and a wonderful read over all. I'd recommend this to anyone and everyone. Bell Hooks articulates love beautifully through this book.

0cchi

Kiran Aftab

it’s just so outdated and it was hard to read because it felt like rambling

Ainsley Jeffery

I am very glad I got around to reading this finally. Particularly felt connected to the themes discussed in chapter 8 Community: Loving Communion and will reference back to other works referenced throughout this novel.

Liyah 🤎

No one should need me to add to the chorus of cries of bell hook's genius but I must add my voice to the heap. This book was scarily predictive considering it was written in 1999(?) and it came at the perfect time in my life as I've been thinking a lot about where romantic, familial, and platonic love fit in my life. Its a book I'll probably read more than once and return to often. My favorite sections in no particular order are the one about loving children, practicing a love ethic, friendship, and resisting power dynamics in romantic contexts. Everyone person should read this because none of us have been taught to love well.

Jo Ottmann

Beautifully written. Reconciled a lot of my thoughts on love. 

Sakinah Safiee

Buku yang membuatku merasa hangat dan menjadi reflektif memikirkan tentang cinta yang selama ini aku beri dan dapatkan. Sejujurnya, aku membaca buku ini sebagai bentuk coping mechanism setelah patah hati. Coping mechanism yang tepat sih, soalnya buku ini bak obat untuk patah hatiku #anjay. 

Hal yang aku suka dari buku ini selain ditulis dengan perspektif feminis, tetapi juga sangat spiritual. Buku ini juga membuat aku memikirkan kembali tentang spiritualisme, ingin rasanya menjadi pribadi yang lebih spiritual. Karena bagi bell hooks, menjadi spiritual adalah salah satu cara kita menjadi penuh kasih. Spiritual yang dimaksud tidak sama dengan religius, meskipun memang bell hooks mengambil banyak referensi dari agama Kristen/Katolik. Justru malah bell hooks beberapa kali mengkritik agama dalam kaitannya dengan patriarki, fasisme, dan pandangan akan kematian.

Selain itu, cinta yang dibahas di sini juga sangat luas, mulai dari konteks di keluarga, romansa, coupledom, pertemanan, dan komuni. 

Pokoknya aku merekomendasikan semua orang untuk membaca buku ini. Aku bisa bilang, buku ini itu layaknya panduan bagi kita untuk menjadi sosok yang penuh kasih sekaligus panduan untuk bisa menemukan cinta sejati yang kita nantikan. Betul-betul self help book yang sangaaaat membantu. 

Rafa

Buku yang membuatku merasa hangat dan menjadi reflektif memikirkan tentang cinta yang selama ini aku beri dan dapatkan. Sejujurnya, aku membaca buku ini sebagai bentuk coping mechanism setelah patah hati. Coping mechanism yang tepat sih, soalnya buku ini bak obat untuk patah hatiku #anjay. 

Hal yang aku suka dari buku ini selain ditulis dengan perspektif feminis, tetapi juga sangat spiritual. Buku ini juga membuat aku memikirkan kembali tentang spiritualisme, ingin rasanya menjadi pribadi yang lebih spiritual. Karena bagi bell hooks, menjadi spiritual adalah salah satu cara kita menjadi penuh kasih. Spiritual yang dimaksud tidak sama dengan religius, meskipun memang bell hooks mengambil banyak referensi dari agama Kristen/Katolik. Justru malah bell hooks beberapa kali mengkritik agama dalam kaitannya dengan patriarki, fasisme, dan pandangan akan kematian.

Selain itu, cinta yang dibahas di sini juga sangat luas, mulai dari konteks di keluarga, romansa, coupledom, pertemanan, dan komuni. 

Pokoknya aku merekomendasikan semua orang untuk membaca buku ini. Aku bisa bilang, buku ini itu layaknya panduan bagi kita untuk menjadi sosok yang penuh kasih sekaligus panduan untuk bisa menemukan cinta sejati yang kita nantikan. Betul-betul self help book yang sangaaaat membantu. 

this book could not come at a more opportune time in my life. i've been at a crossroads lately, stuck between wanting to preserve myself and keep myself whole, or to fully dissolve myself in the chaos of life and love. it's safe to say that this book is now one of the bibles i will always come back and refer to whenever i am in need of a reminder.

Maria Rumantir

neri

Once again, another recommendation from my friend Lu<3!. I have a lot to say, /All about love/ touches a lot of topics and even if I try I don't think I can be brief.

Liking a book is subjective, and after reading a few reviews I don't quite see how people see this as a self-help book. To me it was interesting, it was lovely to be able to understand Hooks thoughts and views on love. Even when I don't agree fully in some parts, or even at all on some topics, I find myself agreeing on others. Even with ones that I somehow avoided thinking about. I was confronted on some stuff I've been actively trying not to think about.

Love is very subjective too. I find it quite weird to see people treat Bell Hook's words as if her words are the only way to understand love. To me this book was more of an essay, or a commentary on love. A commentary you can definitely like or dislike, clearly. 

I love reading about love. Different views, commentaries, thoughts. I've given this a lot of thought. Regarding Hooks I am specially grateful to read about what she had to say about Childhood & Love, or the power and need of language. About grief, as much as I try to avoid it, too. Her words on the topic were, in my case, needed. And I agreed with most of it. I also loved her thoughts on community!!!

I do have to say that although I love to read about beliefs, religion and so, while not being religious myself (although as any other person I do have personal beliefs), some parts where the religious topics came in, specially the last chapter, made it a bit hard. 

Still, her word and way of sharing thoughts were lovely for me. I also felt like some wording, and even some parts, are a bit outdated seeing it from today's standpoint, but that's normal, and I'm glad it is that way. Not saying this in a negative way, just sharing my thoughts on it. It was also very interesting (but in a concerning way) how her commentary on capitalism isn't very far away from how it still is today. 

Overall, a very nice reading. It is not a revolutionary book, but reading about every single topic she talks about and how they work related to love and loving was interesting. I truly loved reading Bell Hooks' words. I also don't thunk I've marked, annotated and highlighted a book like this one in years. I've also saved a few titles to also read in a future, and will continue to get into her writing and thoughts more!

I feel like this review, even while being extremely long, is reductive, but I am not good with words, and it was definitely a complex book in relation to the amount of different topics and thoughts it talks about! But anyway, love is political, and thinking a lot about "Life without communion in love with others would be less fulfilling no matter the extent of one's self love. All over the world people live in intimate daily contact with one another." Truly a beautiful section.

Really popular book nowadays. I really like that bell hooks attempts to define love explicitly and as an action rather than a feeling. Her discussion of "templates of love," typically acquired during childhood and manifested in our adult relationships, is very discussion-provoking with others. 

Kevin Juneos Mei Le

Bell Hooks' All About Love is a snapshot of love and all its details through her life's chapters. I can't say I love this one, although parts of it really stirred some things in me. Others—love in the context of divine faith and spirituality—I really didn't connect with.

This book explores the many ways we see and feel love in our everyday lives: love in the family, romantic love, love as a consumer, love defined by wealth and social classes, sex. I had many thoughts taking in this book—agreeing to some points while debating others. I love the fact that Bell Hooks' "love" can be seen from multiple lenses. While not every chapter resonated with me, I found one that did. And it hits spot on.

This is the kind of book you read and then write about with your own perspectives—I'm talking journalling prompts for days. I like to think of it as a springboard from which you can jump into your own pool of thoughts, reflect, make bubbles. In a way, All About Love felt like required reading, and I'm glad I read it. 

y✦

Bell Hooks' All About Love is a snapshot of love and all its details through her life's chapters. I can't say I love this one, although parts of it really stirred some things in me. Others—love in the context of divine faith and spirituality—I really didn't connect with.

This book explores the many ways we see and feel love in our everyday lives: love in the family, romantic love, love as a consumer, love defined by wealth and social classes, sex. I had many thoughts taking in this book—agreeing to some points while debating others. I love the fact that Bell Hooks' "love" can be seen from multiple lenses. While not every chapter resonated with me, I found one that did. And it hits spot on.

This is the kind of book you read and then write about with your own perspectives—I'm talking journalling prompts for days. I like to think of it as a springboard from which you can jump into your own pool of thoughts, reflect, make bubbles. In a way, All About Love felt like required reading, and I'm glad I read it. 

Happy Valentine's Day! 💌

this book feels like a gift to this earth

"To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity, and the will to cooperate), we have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way. Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, allowing it to govern and inform how we think and act, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone."

This passage is what got me to read Bell Hooks' "All About Love" and it remains as my favorite part after finally finishing it. Though there were a lot of insightful messages throughout, after a few chapters it felt kind of repetitive with lots of rather empty ideas back to back. I especially didn't like the heavy emphasis on the bible in the last chapters.

Personally, I wouldn't read it again as a whole but just look through my annotations and notes.

"To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity, and the will to cooperate), we have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way. Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, allowing it to govern and inform how we think and act, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone."

This passage is what got me to read Bell Hooks' "All About Love" and it remains as my favorite part after finally finishing it. Though there were a lot of insightful messages throughout, after a few chapters it felt kind of repetitive with lots of rather empty ideas back to back. I especially didn't like the heavy emphasis on the bible in the last chapters.

Personally, I wouldn't read it again as a whole but just look through my annotations and notes.

she’s such a good writer but it’s just a bunch of thoughtful sentences, Hard to follow along and actually remember what was in the last chapter as it just jumps from idea to idea 

charlotte brand

The first bit of this book was solid and so beautifully written. The definition and explanation of what love is found a meaningful place in my mind. However, toward the end it gets very heavy with Christian literature. I get spirituality is important, but I wish the Bible was not so heavily referenced in the end. 

Angel Hammon

Puella Desideria Adiartanto

The last book I finished in 2023 and the first one (I think) on which I feel pretty strongly to write commentaries.

[reviews incoming]

Jun Angelo Cabuguas

such necessary insight, i thoroughly enjoyed reading this & am excited to return to it time and time again :)

alice browne

very insightful, especially the ways that our family dynamics and capitalism are tied into our modern conceptions of love <3 want to read more bell hooks for sure

petrina

I may not agree with all of the things she said but the lessons and new perspective this book gave me were enough for me to rate this five stars. Enough for me to buy my own physical copy. Enough to make me think about love often and enough for me to appreciate life a little more. Bell Hooks you will always be revelant.

ame 

This is filled with so many tidbits of wisdom and is a short and quick read so it’s easy to comprehend. I thought it was going to be more of a memoir but it’s really more commentary on the idea and meaning of love. 

Just skip over the weird take on Monica Lewinsky and some of the binary gender ideas, I’m giving this grace since it’s been out for decades and the author is no longer living and can’t answer for that particular take.

Abigail

This is filled with so many tidbits of wisdom and is a short and quick read so it’s easy to comprehend. I thought it was going to be more of a memoir but it’s really more commentary on the idea and meaning of love. 

Just skip over the weird take on Monica Lewinsky and some of the binary gender ideas, I’m giving this grace since it’s been out for decades and the author is no longer living and can’t answer for that particular take.

I underlined something on every page and plan to revisit frequently 🖤

Emiley Jones

I like the way bell hooks analyzes „love“ a term that we use frequently but never really thought about it‘s power of meaning. I felt attacked and understood, sometimes confused but always very relieved to read her words. I really recommend this book.

antonia maria wagner she/they &
All About Love by bell hooks

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