All About Love: New Visions in Our Shared Shelf

Mar 01, 2016 Kressel Housman rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, philosophy, our-shared-shelf

This book was the March pick for Emma Watson’s feminist book club, and while I went into it with quite a negative impression of author bell hooks, the book completely changed my mind. That’s not to say I found it as life-changing as other reviewers have, but I definitely agreed with most of what bell hooks had to say. Who wouldn’t? She’s making the case for a world with more love and less power-seeking.

The reason for my initial bad impression was a comment bell hooks made in her interview with E This book was the March pick for Emma Watson’s feminist book club, and while I went into it with quite a negative impression of author bell hooks, the book completely changed my mind. That’s not to say I found it as life-changing as other reviewers have, but I definitely agreed with most of what bell hooks had to say. Who wouldn’t? She’s making the case for a world with more love and less power-seeking.

The reason for my initial bad impression was a comment bell hooks made in her interview with Emma. She called the image of Hermione at the end of the last movie “frumpy” and “passive.” “They turned her into a suburban housewife,” she said. Since feminist theorists advocate taking care to avoid stereotyping language, I feel no compunction in calling out the use of the passé term “housewife” instead of the more creative “homemaker.” It seemed like knee-jerk feminist prejudice against motherhood to me. But in her book, bell hooks presents a more broad-minded approach: “Satisfied homemakers, both women and the rare men who have chosen to stay home, have a lot to teach us all about the joy that comes from self-determination. They are their own bosses, setting the terms of their labor and the measure of their reward. More than any of us, they have the freedom to develop right livelihood."

That’s definitely true to my experience. When I stay home and complete some domestic chore for my family, I usually feel more accomplished than I do after sitting at the front desk at my office all day. Of course, that quiet time allows me to type up book reviews like this one, which I absolutely love doing, but when it comes to concrete and objective good in the world, I’m inclined to think a clean house is more important than my book reviews. To weave in bell hooks’ ideas, cleaning my house is caregiving to my family, part of, though not all of, the task of loving them. Writing reviews is part of self-care, and I need to do that because loving myself enables me to love my family better.

The book is contemplative in tone and lies somewhere between philosophy and self-help, except unlike most self-help books, it’s not heavy on practical advice. Unlike the philosophy books I’ve recently read, though, it’s not heavy on brain science, which may be because it was written in the 90’s, when brain imaging was brand new. I have no objection to reading someone else’s philosophy of life born of her experience and reading – that’s the way I form my own philosophy of life – but I could understand a critique that the book is “unscientific.”

Although bell hooks is a big name in feminism, she probably would never have crossed my radar screen if not for Emma Watson. But I’m happy to have been introduced, and I’ll probably read her seminal Feminism is for Everybody at some point. Even more intriguing though, is one of the books she cited in this one, which is about love and spirituality in community activism: Altars in the Street. I bought it on Amazon today. I hope I won’t regret it! ...more

5 likes · Like · see review