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All About Love: New Visions

(Love Trilogy)

Bell Hooks

4.06 · Rating details · 19,062 ratings · 1,979 reviews

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 ...more

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Hardcover, 240 pages

Published December 22nd 1999 by William Morrow

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Sep 28, 2013 TJ rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction

The best and worst thing about this book was hooks' commitment throughout the work to making powerful, decisive statements that wanted to leave little room open for argument.
When she was on, this authoritative voice felt like a revelation -- such as when she declares that abuse and love cannot coexist. It's a beautiful, affirming, heartbreaking statement, that seems to have a large weight of truth behind it, at once the most and least obvious thing. The definition of love that she borrows and e ...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Katie rated it really liked it

Well, so, OK. Here's the thing. This book changed/is changing my life. It came to me at just the right second (by which I mean, I took it from the house where I was house-sitting at just the right second), and I have taken it straight to heart. hooks is in the business of life-changing, really, whether she's teaching us how to love in the face of a planet of lovelessness, or teaching us to find, confront, and exorcise the racism and sexism by which we invariably live. What got to me in "All Abou ...more

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Aug 03, 2017 Thomas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, feminism, 2nd-favorites, own-physical, five-stars

I could write almost every page of this book a five-star review. bell hooks, African-American feminist author of the revelationary The Will to Change , creates another visionary work with All About Love. She argues for the importance of love in our private and public lives in powerful and innovative ways. At first the title of this book made me roll my eyes a little, in a "oh yay, a book that's all about love, how cliche" kinda way. But from the very first page, hooks offers piercing insights I could write almost every page of this book a five-star review. bell hooks, African-American feminist author of the revelationary The Will to Change , creates another visionary work with All About Love. She argues for the importance of love in our private and public lives in powerful and innovative ways. At first the title of this book made me roll my eyes a little, in a "oh yay, a book that's all about love, how cliche" kinda way. But from the very first page, hooks offers piercing insights into the importance of love and how our predominant culture fails to teach us how to love. For example, a quote early on in the book, about how love and abuse cannot coexist:

"When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care. Often we hear of a man who beats his children and wife and then goes to the corner bar and passionately proclaims how much he loves them. If you talk to the wife on a good day, she may also insist he loves her, despite his violence. An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as were taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad."

This book will challenge readers and make many of us uncomfortable. hooks interrogates normalized mediums of love in our society - romantic love, the nuclear family, etc. - and shows how these default systems can lead to problems. She touches on such an important and thought-provoking set of topics, including: how the media almost never portrays healthy, communicative relationships, how capitalism and patriarchy ruin love by forcing women to provide emotional labor while men do not, and how we take friendships for granted because of romance. Throughout all of this, she illuminates a path toward a more loving relationship with yourself and others, so we can all work toward a more loving society. A powerful quote about friendship:

"Most of us are raised to believe we will either find love in our first family (our family of origin) or, if not there, in the second family we are expected to form through committed romantic couplings, particularly those that lead to marriage and/or lifelong bondings. Many of us learn as children that friendship should never be seen as just as important as family ties. However, friendship is the place in which a great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community... Often we take friendships for granted even when they are the interactions where we experience mutual pleasure. We place them in a secondary position, especially in relation to romantic bonds. This devaluation of our friendships creates an emptiness we may not see when we are devoting all our attention to finding someone to love romantically or giving all our attention to a chosen loved one."

Overall, an inspiring book I wish more people would read. I did disagree with hooks's analysis a few times (e.g., I do not think you have to be spiritual or religious to experience love, I perceived her interpretation of the Monica Lewinsky affair as simplistic and slut-shaming) but by and large hooks articulated so many ideas that have always percolated in my mind, just in a coherent and compelling way. Other reviewers complain that hooks does not support all of her arguments with research; while I respect that complaint, we also must keep in mind that the research we produce reflects the values of our time, and hooks is way ahead of 2017 (i.e., the land of Trump's America). I hope that we can all learn from hooks's wisdom and practice the art of loving with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. I will end this review with one last quote about viewing love as an action:

"This same politics of greed is at play when folks seek love. They often want fulfillment immediately. Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know genuine love we have to invest time and commitment... Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling. In patriarchal culture men are especially inclined to see love as something they should receive without expending effort. More often than not they do not want to do the work that love demands. 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 to love." ...more

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Sep 24, 2020 Always Pouting rated it liked it · review of another edition

I started off really liking this book and then it i just kind of lost interest. I think the book is very well written which I always find appealing. I also think it's interesting to think of love as a verb and in the framework laid out by Hooks. I just like others started to get put off by the sermonizing. It can be cool to read where others are coming from but I guess what I found off putting was for me love is about extending others understanding and the benefit of the doubt but her comments a ...more

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Mar 01, 2016 Iamshadow rated it it was ok

Shelves: nonfiction

While there were a couple of bits of this book I liked (hence the two stars), on the whole, this is a thumbs down for me.

Firstly, it was incredibly heterocentric. While the book at times acknowledged gay people existed, that didn't change the tone throughout. The only two gay people mentioned were a graffiti artist who did a work the author admired that was apparently commentary on the (then current) AIDS crisis, and a lesbian who on the author's advice maintained contact with her toxic, homopho While there were a couple of bits of this book I liked (hence the two stars), on the whole, this is a thumbs down for me.

Firstly, it was incredibly heterocentric. While the book at times acknowledged gay people existed, that didn't change the tone throughout. The only two gay people mentioned were a graffiti artist who did a work the author admired that was apparently commentary on the (then current) AIDS crisis, and a lesbian who on the author's advice maintained contact with her toxic, homophobic family. Apparently that was the right thing to do, because they've 'improved' over time. Sorry, lady, reality check. Queer people do not exist as diversity lessons for straight people. Cutting people who hate us is often GENUINELY a matter of survival. Just because the family structure is somewhat maintained does not justify the acid erosion of homophobia, up close and personal, on the individual. If you're in that situation, just get the fuck out.

Secondly, apparently, abusers are that way because of the patriarchy - because they had horrible childhoods and/or society made them do it. Oh, and empathising with them and forgiving them is the one true way to being awesomely full of joy and self-esteem. This, I would have thrown the book at the wall about, if I had a physical copy. While toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are actual things, these sentiments fail to acknowledge that some people out there hurt people because they like hurting people. My abuser had an idyllic childhood. He hurt me because he is a sociopathic sadist with a taste for little girls. He wasn't made that way by his parents or society - he did it because he wanted to, and he has no guilt for what he did. He's probably out there doing it to some other kid right now. Empathise with him? What would that teach me? Nothing. Forgive him? Listen. One of the most self-esteem building things I ever taught myself was that I didn't have to forgive. That honouring my experience was more important, and acknowledging that NOTHING justified the hurt I went through was more powerful than just giving him back my power again by saying it didn't matter, that it was excusable. It DID matter. And all trying to forgive him would do would be to put my own needs last, yet again.

Thirdly, she spent a whole whack of the middle complaining about kids today and modern society and how back before the '50s, materialism didn't exist (whut), whining that current day relationships are 'disposable as Dixie cups if someone's needs aren't being met' while almost in the same breath saying how great and important it is that people have the freedom to leave unhealthy relationships (confusing), and managing to victim blame Nicole Simpson and call Monica Lewinsky 'a prostitute' and a 'a fake victim' while rationalising that Bill Clinton couldn't keep it in his pants because of some childhood sad or something, like we should feel sorry for him for taking advantage of a woman decades younger than himself that he was in a huge position of power over (just plain tasteless, and really not the kind of thing I expected from someone labelled as a feminist with a speciality in male dominance) .

Lastly, despite acknowledging that organised religion is not the answer for everything, this book went weirdly heavily Christian at times, notably when the author wrote some whole section about angels being real and how the story of Jacob and Rachel was about him growing as a person, somehow. All I could think was, I remember that story, and it is LITERALLY about a man buying women like cattle. It's about trade - work in exchange for women. It's not about love at all. Oh, and because I actually don't believe in a soul or angels, I'm spiritually dead or not even human or something, IDEK. Way to go, there. Yes, I'm an atheist. Yes, I somehow manage to be a good, kind, empathetic, loving person despite not believing in God. Fancy that. ...more

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Oct 10, 2008 Ciara rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: hippies, people at raindbow gatherings, people who believe in power crystals

Shelves: feminist-y-books, read-in-2006

i find it astonishing that so many people i otherwise respect & admire got so into this book. i would love to try an experiment where this book is re-released under some nobody's name, rather than bell hooks, & we can see how people respond to it when they aren't actually responding to the whole bell hooks association. i have LOVED a lot of hooks's books. this was a big pile of crap, & not just that, it ushered in a whole generation of terrible crappy books written by bell hooks. there has been ...more

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Feb 12, 2012 Ashley Ward rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-club

My book club chose this book in honor of Valentine's Day. It's the first (and probably now only) book I've ever read by Bell Hooks, and I was excited to read it. When I checked it out of the library along with a huge stack of other books, the librarian pulled it out and said, "Oh, this book is SO good." Which made me even more excited to read it.

If she had stopped after the first two chapters, I probably would have recommended it as a worthwhile essay to read. I liked that she really took the ti ...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Natalie rated it it was ok

I really wanted to like this book, because I like bell hooks, her ideas and what she stands for.

But, my god! I found myself having to scan page after page in a half-read because I couldn't bare the self-help dialogue that she was engaging in. Furthermore, I found myself absolutely cringing over the books she referenced, not to mention how many times she quoted The Road Less Traveled.

Yes. I felt like some kind of academic snob while reading it, each time I would roll my eyes and skip ahead.

Yes. I ...more

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Jun 26, 2019 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-gelassen

Yes. Please do read this. Make yourself better make the world better. You can trust bell hooks.

eta :: just couldn't not add this. Those giving the one=and two stars, those folks need love too. Be kind. ...more

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Jul 29, 2020 Lisa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A book all about love. And how it should be the basis of everything. And how loveless our society currently is. Therein lies the rub.

bell hooks has some insightful ideas about how love should permeate all of our actions. Work should be lovely too. Hell, taking out the garbage can be lovely. Her definition of love includes the idea that you be invested in the spiritual growth of another/others. It's a concept that hit home for me.

Ultimately, though, this book went into some weird spaces that seem ...more

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Mar 01, 2016 Katelyn rated it really liked it

Shelves: women-gender-sexuality

In writing this review, I felt the need to pose the question: What makes a feminist book?

Does it need to deal specifically with feminism, gender inequality, women, etc.? Does it simply need to avoid problematic stereotyping and other issues that contribute to the cultural perpetuation of systemic sexism? Does it need to be written by a self-avowed feminist or inspiring woman?

This book does a lot of those things, but most importantly, it is daring in its exposure of an issue that causes deep cult In writing this review, I felt the need to pose the question: What makes a feminist book?

Does it need to deal specifically with feminism, gender inequality, women, etc.? Does it simply need to avoid problematic stereotyping and other issues that contribute to the cultural perpetuation of systemic sexism? Does it need to be written by a self-avowed feminist or inspiring woman?

This book does a lot of those things, but most importantly, it is daring in its exposure of an issue that causes deep cultural anxiety, perhaps because it is disproportionately attributed to women. Love is a human issue masked as a women's issue. bell hooks diligently unravels the complicated web we've woven about love, revealing its purpose and potential.

It is at once intensely personal and widely applicable. Reading these chapters, organized by types of love, we see hooks's process, a format that for some reads as a self-help narrative. For me, it provided an approach to dismantling my own misconceptions about love in my life. While hooks's ideas are not directly useful for my own situation at all times, it is easy to translate her strategies into methods that work for me. For example, I am not a spiritual person, so praying is not something that I find useful, but she states more universally on page 215, "Prayer provides a space where talking cures." For me, this type of healing can be done through journaling or daydreaming.

This book is feminist because hooks unapologetically inhabits a subjective space. She is expected to philosophize in a way that is relatable to anyone, to a diverse audience, which is what I have identified as at the root of many criticisms I've read of this volume. Instead, she speaks mainly about herself and her own experiences. In this way, she allows herself and her readers to claim individualized spaces. It encourages personal exploration that happens both internally and externally. This is something that women often need to hear repeated in a society that expects them to sacrifice personal growth for the benefit of others. hooks provides a roadmap of her own journey toward new visions of love, and while my journey will not look the same, it is heartening to know that it has been done, it will be done, and I will think often of her words as I continue down my own, individual path.

Not everything in this book resonated with me. There were passages that I took issue with on a basic level. For example, I disagree strongly with her judgment of Monica Lewinsky's participation in the affair with President Clinton; I was angered by her assessment. There were parts that felt dated, which is inevitable when reading a book 15 years after publication. Generally speaking, however, I found this book useful and powerful, and I feel stronger having read it. ...more

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May 22, 2020 bookmateriality rated it liked it · review of another edition

I really love bell hooks, but this may be closer to a 2.5 - disliked the religious undertones, the (at times) generalising statements, and lack of rigour (rigour that I was expecting in an ‘exposition’ of the concept of love). It started off well, with some clear and illuminating statements, but I found it inconsistent. The final third of the book seemed to resonate. I found myself experiencing polarised emotions - underlining whole sections, and then laughing at others. I didn’t find hooks’s ex ...more

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Jul 13, 2020 lizzie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Some friends recommended this book to me because I was going through something traumatic, and I think they were really right. bell hooks talks about love in a way that's so healing. Love is universal, tangible, and transformative. And it comes in so many forms. Also, love isn't about an absence of pain or grief, but something that lives alongside it and makes being alive more bearable. Love is also remarkably different from abuse and the two can't exist at the same time. Love is about communion, ...more

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May 31, 2009 Emily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2009

Casually leafing through bell hooks's All About Love: New Visions a few years ago in a bookstore, I was drawn by her idea that love should be regarded as a verb, not a noun. Traditionally, our culture thinks of love as a thing, a passive feeling of tenderness or affection that comes over us, into which we fall involuntarily, something instinctual over which we have little control. hooks argues, on the contrary, that love is a chosen action, something we must constantly affirm and on which we mus ...more

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Mar 31, 2019 Misty rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is a GEM!!!
If I were to highlight pages or write notes, I’d be highlighting and rewriting the entire book.
There were so many a-ha moments for me. I picked this book up at a time where I needed it most.

I look forward to rereading and reflecting.

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May 11, 2016 El rated it it was ok

Shelves: cultural-studies-and-other, library-borrow, hear-me-roar-and-gender

What did I just read?

hooks is an incredible person and an incredible writer, but I think the hooks I used to know, and the hooks I want to know now are two very different people. That's okay, because I am in support of people growing and changing and becoming, whatever, their most authentic selves. But I was surprised by this book.

I would say the first half or more really did work for me. hooks writes here about LOVE, the power of LOVE, the way LOVE is viewed in our western culture, the problems What did I just read?

hooks is an incredible person and an incredible writer, but I think the hooks I used to know, and the hooks I want to know now are two very different people. That's okay, because I am in support of people growing and changing and becoming, whatever, their most authentic selves. But I was surprised by this book.

I would say the first half or more really did work for me. hooks writes here about LOVE, the power of LOVE, the way LOVE is viewed in our western culture, the problems some people have with LOVE, etc. etc. She touched on topics that made sense to me. What especially worked for me was a section on Commitment that talked about the workplace, and since I work in a place that doesn't not necessarily foster a loving environment all the time, which I recognize more now that I've removed myself from some of the larger negativeness, I found what she had to say about love in the workplace especially profound. She recognizes that most people think a loving workplace is a thing of myths, but I do believe it can exist, but that so many people are wrapped up in gossip and not showing their true selves, so it's next to impossible for any love to grow out of that. I don't think she necessarily expects people to hold hands and sing Kumbayah all day long - she understands that with love comes work, hard work, it doesn't come easily.

And that's the true basis of this book. There's this idea that any true love is a magical thing that comes along, and then our lives are perfect and no work is required. Many people are dissatisfied in perfectly good relationships because they realize they still have to work, and so it must not be true love, right? Wrong, and that's what hooks is trying to help readers understand.

But then at some point, there was a shift in tone, and suddenly we're reading about religion and angels. Yes, angels. And the Bible. I understand that there is feminism in Christianity, or so some claim, but I'm not sure I buy it because, well, that ain't my shtick. But to each their own. This book was published in 2000 but the references to popular culture or politics are much more related to the 1990s.

While most of the book involved talk of spirituality, once it crossed over into talking about straightforward religion, I started to feel my eyes glazing over. Spirituality is one thing, as far as I'm concerned, because it can be whatever it means to each individual. But religion is usually of an organized establishment, and my experience means something very specific to me, so love in that context is basically the same thing I've heard most of my life from everyone else - that to be religious means to LOVE and then those same people turned around and beat their children after church because of the smallest infraction. That's what I witnessed, though thankfully not in my own household.

In any case. There's this attitude that love and the ability to love others comes from that very specific source of spirituality, which I disagree with. I am not religious, I do not believe in the same things a lot of other people believe in, but I am capable of love, I am capable of compassion, I am capable of having morals, all without believe in God. I believe in being a good person, which transcends religion - or at least it should.

Still, I can't deny that hooks had some decent things to say throughout most of the book, even if it was a bit self-help-y, even though hooks very specifically discussed how different her book was from other self-help books. She allows there's an issue in most self-help books about gender stereotypes and how they perpetuate those issues in our society, that idea that men are from Mars and that women are from Venus, and all that jazz. Those ideas or problematic in numerous ways, and I feel this was hooks' way of addressing the previous literature.

Bottom line: What worked for me here really worked for me; what didn't work for me really didn't work for me. I would not recommend this book to anyone reading bell hooks for the first time - this is probably not the place to start, unless all of what I wrote about above regarding Christianity is something you're interested in.

In any case, it's a short book, easy to read. It's not very complicated, but if you're looking for answers, there aren't that many here beyond stop thinking true love is all about rainbows and lollipops. You're going to fall in love and you're going to have to work at it. Get over the idea that relationships are easy-peasy. But she also said some good things about what it means to be in a loving relationship, and I think all of that is work reading. So maybe just read the first four or five chapters? Yeah, maybe do that. Stop reading when she starts talking about angels. Unless that is your thing. ...more

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Mar 02, 2016 Roxana rated it liked it

I have to say I had mixed feelings about this book. I found it eye-opening at times, but other times I simply couldn't connect with it at all, and couldn't quite move past some gender generalisations that the author so passionately claims herself to stand against.

It did make me think about the meaning of love and the context of love more widely, yet I still can't agree with some of the principles on which this book is based and the idea that unless love follows certain rules (e.g. "there is no ...more

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Mar 01, 2016 Emily rated it liked it

Shelves: our-shared-shelf

Though I gave this book three stars, it was a very important read for me. I learned a lot from bell hooks about choosing love, about re-vitalizing our dedication to honesty, accountability, and hope. Growing up in a dysfunctional family and as a recovering codependent, I related very well to nearly 70% of the text's offerings and many of the author's own experiences, and I believe that I grew and developed as a person while completing this read. I would recommend this text to everyone.

I am unabl Though I gave this book three stars, it was a very important read for me. I learned a lot from bell hooks about choosing love, about re-vitalizing our dedication to honesty, accountability, and hope. Growing up in a dysfunctional family and as a recovering codependent, I related very well to nearly 70% of the text's offerings and many of the author's own experiences, and I believe that I grew and developed as a person while completing this read. I would recommend this text to everyone.

I am unable to rate this book higher for a few reasons: 1) As an agnostic with atheistic tendencies who was raised Catholic, hooks concentrates on too many Christian and biblical expressions of faith for my taste. These made me hold the book at arm's-length for portions that I believe I otherwise would have been able to embrace very readily. My desire for less discussions of God is not a judgment, but a personal preference. 2) bell hooks is known for writing about many subjects in ways that are more intellectually accessible for people of many different privilege and education backgrounds, which I applaud. My reservation with this particular text is that, in my opinion, she represents too many generalizations as fact without citations. To her credit, she tends to minimize the academic formatting of her works to make it more accessible for her vast readership, but I have a personal preference for additional footnotes and/or endnotes where appropriate. 3) Lastly, though this text was introduced by the author with full transparency regarding its expression in an ideal world, there were definitely a few moments when I believed her suggestions for returning to and/or embracing love were not realistic enough to be put into practice at all times. As a recovering codependent who has spent many years steadily improving in therapy, I have come to realize that there are definitely some boundaries that individuals have every right to set for themselves and the interactions they have with others, even if those boundaries render the true openness hooks advocates for to be somewhat compromised.

...more

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Apr 13, 2020 Helly rated it it was amazing

bell hooks has this compelling style of expressing her take on what it means to love, be in love and form a healthy definition of the same. What I can assure is that a reader will undergo a spiritual change in the span of 200 pages. So, pick it up, maybe?

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Jun 25, 2008 Kathy rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Kathy by: Found it myself

Shelves: philosophy, sociology-cultures

On this, the fourth anniversary, and beginning of the fifth year of the Iraq war, while thousands marched on the Pentagon in protest, I finished reading "all about love: New Visions by bell hooks, a truly visionary and life-changing read, which should be required reading for this entire nation. I was initially skeptical of her thesis that society needs to adapt a universal definition of love, but as I continued reading, the idea struck a chord of recognition within me that I certainly hope will On this, the fourth anniversary, and beginning of the fifth year of the Iraq war, while thousands marched on the Pentagon in protest, I finished reading "all about love: New Visions by bell hooks, a truly visionary and life-changing read, which should be required reading for this entire nation. I was initially skeptical of her thesis that society needs to adapt a universal definition of love, but as I continued reading, the idea struck a chord of recognition within me that I certainly hope will continue to resonate for the rest of my days on this spinning orb. She proposes first, that love is not a feeling at all. Love is an action that we choose to take. Additionally, her theory is that love must contain a number of components including: care, affection, trust, respect, open honest communication, and commitment.

Love, by definition, may never include abuse...if abuse exists in the relationship...it ain't love. If it does not contain ALL of those components, then it ain't love. She also won me over with her dismissal of John Gray (Mars & Venus guy) because he primarily proposes that females do all the work of changing in a relationship (go bell!). Many who read this will come to the painful realization (as I did) that they do not truly know how to love; and through this suffering will also recognize that, even so, they continue to maintain faith in love. Having had a father like mine provided all too convenient of an excuse for blaming men for my anger and disappointment. bell reminds me that love can not exist in the middle of a power struggle.

After clarifying the definition, she describes the barriers, such as greed, dishonesty, violence & domination, and disconnection that prevent people from giving and receiving love. She discusses how society has come to accept and embrace these ideas that murder compassion, promote poverty, and support warfare.

This discourse speaks to the space within the heart that so many of us had come to think would never be filled. My conclusion, love....is not corny at all. It is all that really matters.
...more

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Mar 02, 2016 Helen rated it it was amazing

One to read over and over again, to truly dive into the meanings and to truly understand it because it is one hard to understand, definitely will go back to it in the future.

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Mar 02, 2016 Christina rated it did not like it

Shelves: our-shared-shelf, feminism, 2016-reads, x-uno-challenge-2016

Let's be honest, without Emma Watson and her 'Our Shared Shelf' book club I never would have read this book. It's just not what I like or enjoy reading. I had to force myself to keep reading, and tbh I don't even know /what/ I was reading.

I feel bad for giving only 1 star though since I'm sure there are people who like books like this one, but I just couldn't enjoy it :( ...more

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Sep 12, 2017 Margot rated it it was ok

Shelves: feminism, non-fiction

This book was not for me.

I admit to not being a big fan of self-help books. I'm sure that they can be a great help to people, but I've given them a few tries and ended up annoyed each time. Sadly, 'All About Love' is no exception. The preface and first two chapters were promising. I especially liked the bits about abuse and love being unable to co-exist, as well as hooks' thoughts on how toxic masculinity influences relationships. The repeated claim that love is an action, not just a feeling, re This book was not for me.

I admit to not being a big fan of self-help books. I'm sure that they can be a great help to people, but I've given them a few tries and ended up annoyed each time. Sadly, 'All About Love' is no exception. The preface and first two chapters were promising. I especially liked the bits about abuse and love being unable to co-exist, as well as hooks' thoughts on how toxic masculinity influences relationships. The repeated claim that love is an action, not just a feeling, really resonated with me.

It was all downhill from there, though. The overall novel is incoherent and vague. Hooks makes various general statements on society, how women and men behave (containing a serious amount of gender essentialism, by the way) and relationships in our current society. None of these statements are supported by facts or studies. If we're lucky, hooks may include a personal anecdote or refer to one of the numerous (mostly unsourced) quotes, but that's as far as the scientific/academic angle of this book goes. I was expecting a bit more theoretical support to substantiate all of these claims.

About halfway, there is a chapter on divine love. I got the feeling hooks was trying to come across as neutral as possible, but if so, her attempts mostly failed. There's an undercurrent here of the idea that spiritual love is the solution to the lovelessness in our capitalist society. While she does not equate spiritual love to organized religion, I still find this whole reasoning a little biased, considering what we know of history and religion. Hooks is a religious person, I'm not. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Yet at least this chapter still sticks to general references to 'spiritual' love, which can be interpreted pretty broadly. The final chapter abandons this neutrality and inexplicably assumes the existence of angels. I'm not sure what this added to the novel, and I knocked off half a star for this final chapter alone.

Furthermore, the overall tone of the novel came across as rather condescending to me, with the Christian references only adding to the sermon-like quality of the writing. Hooks' attitude towards poor people is inconsistent. They're presented either as a romanticized ideal of people who are able to love even without wealth (vs. the lovelessness in our capitalist society), or addicts who cannot love because they are obsessed with wealth - something they lack. Meanwhile, the references to LGBTQ people are sparse, with hooks' own lesbian sister being brandished as a lesson on forgiving homophobic family members, because if you're lucky they might one day respect your identity! Yeah alright, miss me with that.

Let me conclude by saying that this novel did contain some gems. There were some genuinely interesting insights which I would have loved to read more about. I'm sad to say though that they were lost in what became a hate-read for me. 'All About Love' is a self-help book which contains no practical solutions, only generalizing statements and quotes from books which I would have probably preferred reading. I'll leave you all with one of the most baffling quotes of this novel, when hooks goes full-on preacher mode and criticizes Monica Lewinsky's giving in to greed:

"Concurrently, [Lewinsky] manipulates facts and details, and ultimately prostitutes herself by selling her story for material gain because she is greedy for fame and money, and society condones this get-rich-quick scheme. Her greed is even more intense because she also wants to be seen as a victim. With the boldness of any con artist working the capitalist addiction to fantasy, she attempts to rewrite the script of their consensual exchange of pleasure so that it can appear to be a love story." (124) ...more

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Mar 06, 2018 Deanna rated it really liked it

‘All About Love’ is a warm but challenging take on the politics of love and how people are socialized to see it and allow it to guide their lives, for better or worse. bell hooks is striking and wonderful, as always.

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Jul 25, 2015 Madyson rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2015, non-fiction

I feel bad giving this book two stars because I can still appreciate and respect the insight in this book, but I ultimately found there was more that I disagreed with than agreed with. Conclusions are made about the importance of love that are often true, but the arguments are biased by the author's experiences. I agree there is a real need to continue discussing love openly and I hope that this novel imspires others to reflect. Perhaps in the future a book on the nature of love will exist that I feel bad giving this book two stars because I can still appreciate and respect the insight in this book, but I ultimately found there was more that I disagreed with than agreed with. Conclusions are made about the importance of love that are often true, but the arguments are biased by the author's experiences. I agree there is a real need to continue discussing love openly and I hope that this novel imspires others to reflect. Perhaps in the future a book on the nature of love will exist that I enjoy more.

The author makes the constant assumption that "most of us" do not come from loving families and that "most of us" will never experience love as a result of this (and thus need to embrace love). This experience is obviously true for Hooks, but I don't agree with the assumption that so many people are scarred from childhood, and further that those scars prevenet people from knowing love or being able to naturally fall into healthy relationships. While people (myself included) may struggle from childhood experiences, it doesn't blind us from the possibilities of healthy love.

There are many generalizations that form the central narrative of this book that irked me as I read it. For instance, I agree with most of the obsersavtions about the patriarchy and it's limitations for love. When it comes to erotic attraction, she writes that "the pressure on men in a patriarchal society to 'perform' sexually" leads to ignoring other emotional aspectes in relationships and covering up this mistake by "working too much, or finding playmates they like outside their committed marriage or partnership". On women, she writes that they "rarely choose men solely on the basis of erotic connection". Yes, I agree with the observation that the patriarchy includes that pressure on men, but all the other conclusions seem outlandish.

Aside from generalizations, I vehemently disagree with her concern of the lack of spirituality in our lives. I respect her faith and sharing her experiences on how religion has been important in her life, but I personally do not feel that a religious understanding of love is necessary to enchance life. That said, I still believe it is beneficial that she shared her perspectives on this subject even though I disagreed.

There were a few moments when I thought "yes!" as I read the novel; when Hooks articulated something I felt in my heart or touched on things that reminded me of my personal experiences and gave a voice to my convoluted hurt. But as a whole, the novel seemed to be reflecting on a single line of experience and struggle that I felt did not capture the thought of love as a whole. ...more

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Nov 24, 2007 Hafsa rated it liked it

Shelves: literature, race, gender-feminism

This is the first book I've read by bell hooks, and I was so excited to read it. Unfortunately, it fell a bit short of my expectations. There were definitely some parts where I was able to follow her, mainly in the beginning. But closer to the middle and end it sounded like too much of a self-help book (even though she criticized that entire genre for adhering to traditional gender norms) and became a bit too "fluffy". I think she made a LOT of general observations--especially regarding how men ...more

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May 09, 2013 Azzooz rated it really liked it

I really thoroughly enjoyed the book. One of few aspects that I didn't like about the book was that it had a strong anti-atheistic vibe to it. I have no problem if she wishes to discuss spirituality and love, there's no problem at all, but when a religious, theistic faith is presented as something essential to be loving, caring, and so on, the insinuation that an atheist could not be as loving as a theist is certainly a very antagonizing sentiment that I can't even fathom.
She of course, continu ...more

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Feb 11, 2016 Ksenia Anske rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

This book will help you learn how to love. Because we hardly know, hardly any of us, how to really love. Love in our culture is viewed as a romantic infatuation connected to sex. And that's not love at all. The truth is, we don't know anymore what it is. We've lost it. If we ever had it. This book is an attempt to find it again. ...more

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Dec 11, 2016 Matthew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

I loved most of it, with the exception of her claim that one can't truly love others if one doesn't love themselves. Other than that, it made me work on being more honest. ...more

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Aug 27, 2020 Claire rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Although this isn't a perfect book, I feel that it has made such an impact on my feelings and caused me to self-reflect to such an extent that I can't give it less than 5 stars. Her writing on how the will to power and individualism under the patriarchy and capitalism are incompatible with love, how love is an act and a choice to nurture the spirit of others rather than an uncontrollable feeling, how we can move beyond being wounded and open our hearts to community, was all very insightful. Whil ...more

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About Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks

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Bell Hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins) is an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing has focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She has published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in ...more

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“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
” — 868 likes

“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way.” — 400 likes

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