Book Review: All About Love, bell hooks
All About Love: New Visions (2001), bell hooks
Read: 08/01 - 13/02/2023
Book of 2023: 1
“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, 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 explore the 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 individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “10 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life”. All About Love is a powerful affirmation of just how profoundly she can.
Evie T sent me this one in the post after she read it and saw the phrase ‘emotional terrorist’ and knew I had to read it. Apparently she spent one weekend with me and decided I needed to heal my relationship with love and romance. Big fat facts. She read me like a book.
This book, being non-fiction and borderline preachy, did take me a while to get through. Work has been pretty intense lately so that slowed me down too. However, all in all, I did enjoy this and found it very insightful and an important read.
When we love we can let our hearts speak. (xi)
For me, it highlighted some key aspects about the way I view love, and the romanticised view I have had previously, as well as the closed-off approach I’ve felt over the last year or two. hooks manages to disarm you against your own mindset and attitude, highlighting everything you didn’t quite realise could have a light shone on it. Even the parts you haven’t quite investigated yourself.
The thirteen chapters each tackle a separate aspect of love and seeking love:
Clarity - Give Love Words
Justice - Childhood Love Lessons
Honesty - Be True to Love
Commitment - Let Love Be Love in Me
Spirituality - Divine Love
Values - Living by a Love Ethic
Greed - Simply Love
Community - Loving Communion
Mutuality - The Heart of Love
Romance - Sweet Love
Loss - Loving into Life and Death
Healing - Redemptive Love
Destiny - When Angels Speak of Love
Each chapter offered something different, and I engaged with a lot of them. Some of the more religious ones were slightly lost on me, having seen a lot of judgement and hostility rather than love in that environment myself.
We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart’s longing. (x)
This book kind of came at a perfect time in my life, where I feel I’ve finally reached a point past the pain of the last few years, where I am leaning into myself, my desires, and letting myself feel. I’ve spent a long time shutting myself off to anyone who could possibly get close to me, but throughout that I’ve leant on my friendships more than ever, which is something hooks talks in depth about.
Platonic love > romantic love, baby!
I’m going to pluck some of the themes out that really spoke to me, because if I wrote down every single line I highlighted we’d be here for a long time, and I have things to do today.
Introduction: Grace - Touched By Love
Only love can heal the wounds of the past. However, the intensity of our woundedness often leads to a closing of the heart, making it impossible for us to give or receive the love that is given to us. (xxviii-xxix)
One: Clarity - Give Love Words
This chapter focuses on how love is often undefined, spoken about as clouded in mystery, that it is something that just happens to a person, rather than something that is chosen, something that is active, something that we do to show someone how we feel.
That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called “cathexis”. (5)
[Love is] the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. (10)
Two: Justice - Childhood Love Lessons
This chapter was especially poignant. It discusses the difference between caring and loving, which was particularly important for me. It removed some of the guilt I have felt for a long time, about the feelings I have, when I know someone is doing something out of ‘love’. It might instead be that they are showing ‘care’ but in that moment, are not being loving, or you do not feel loved in those moments.
From early childhood on, most of us remember being told we were loved when we did things pleasing to our parents. (18)
Although lots of children are raised in homes where they are given some degree of care, love may not be sustained or even present. (19)
I can feel cared for, but not loved. I can distinguish when words are said or behaviour is displayed, out of care, rather than out of love.
Three: Honesty - Be True to Love
A commonly accepted assumption in a patriarchal culture is that love can be present in a situation where one group or individual dominates another. Many people believe men can dominate women and children yet still be loving. (40)
!!!!!!!!!! I’m going crazy here !!!!!!!!
The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. (49)
This highlighted the idea of being untruthful in our quest for love, like putting the best version of yourself on display on a date or not showing your romantic partner or even friends you in your lowest moments, the times when you aren’t winning or thriving or batting at 100.
It reminded me of when I’ve spoken with Nat and Becca about how I can flirt, impress new people, and how I enjoy interacting with people I don’t know. They see my gorgeous sag rising self - the chatty, curious, entertaining, explorative Elle. Then they get to know me, and they lose interest, they seem to lack the excitement they previously did - they now see further in, to the clusterfuck of virgo hidden below. I don’t necessarily mean this in a bad way, but it awakens the idea of hiding our true selves when we want to be liked or seem attractive.
Wouldn't we all feel so much better if we were loved when we showed our true selves?
Four: Commitment - Let Love Be Love In Me
The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives. (57)
The fear of being self assertive usually surfaces in women who have been trained to be good girls or dutiful daughters. (59)
I mean come onnnnnn!!!! This is just ridiculous now! This whole chapter speaks to self-love, getting the emotional space you need, and not being ashamed of working on loving yourself.
We need to rid ourselves of misguided notions about self-love. We need to stop fearfully equating it with self-centeredness and selfishness. (66-7)
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. (67)
Five: Spirituality - Divine Love
Yeah we’re swooping past this one.
Six: Values - Living by a Love Ethic
The choice to love is a choice to connect - to find ourselves in the other. (93)
This one also got into the habit of those who have lost love, or those who feel hopelessness when it comes to finding love have a tendency to close off all possibilities for love altogether. Instead of searching for love again, we decide it isn’t for us, because we’re scared of what will happen.
Learning how to face our fear is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way. (101)
Seven: Greed - Simply Love
This one dove into the lovelessness we experience in a capitalist society, in one that seeks immediate gratification, without building up the work and commitment that comes with love and relationships.
In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced by the passion to possess. (106)
Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. (114)
In patriarchal culture men are especially inclined to see love as something they should receive without expending effort. (114)
Ha ha ha HA!
Eight: Community - Loving Communion
This one really gets into the nitty about how we are taught to place romantic love above all other forms of love. When in actuality, a lot of us would tolerate behaviour from a partner or romantic interest, that we would never tolerate from a friend. We place so much of our life on romantic or intimate connections, when the most important love is the one that holds our hand throughout heartbreak, success, and everything in between: the love we find in friendship.
This is a huge theme in my life at the moment - NSVDB even spoke about this at the famous nyee. The love we seek already exists - it’s in the women I text every single day, the ones who leave voice messages checking in, or updating me about their lives, the ones I buy juice for, the ones I travel across the country to visit, the one who sleeps 5 metres away, the ones who ask me to plait their hair, or who post books to me when they think I’ll enjoy it!
Love is staring us in the fucking face and all we care about is who is going to give us a reason to go for dinner a fortnight into Feburary???
Many of us, from childhood on into our adulthood, have looked to friends for the care, respect, knowledge, and all-around nurturance of our growth that we did not find in the family. (133)
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. (134)
There is no special love reserved for romantic partners. (136)
Nine: Mutuality - The Heart of Love
This one hit close to home - we’re talking about being a mother to men in relationships looooool
Constantly frustrated by his indifference to the needs of others and his smug conviction that this was the way life should be, I tried to do the emotional work for both of us. (148)
Like many men, he wanted a woman to be “just like his mama” so that he did not have to do the work of growing up. (149)
To [men], a relationship was about finding someone to take care of all their needs. (151)
In the case of romantic relationships, many people fear getting trapped in a bond that isn’t working, so they flee at the onset of conflict. (159)
We might be living in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to live again. (160)
[Sometimes], it is a gesture of self-love for women to break their commitment and move on. (160)
!!!!!!
We learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well as the joy, of those we love. (165)
Ten: Romance - Sweet Love
True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved. (169)
Here is where we look at love as an action, a choice, a transformative power. That pull between two people is one thing, but to love is to accept the click and work toward it and put effort into maintaining it and approaching it with respect.
Most people remain reluctant to embrace the idea that it is more genuine, more real, to think of choosing to love rather than falling in love. (172)
We fear that evaluating our needs and then carefully choosing partners will reveal that there is no one for us to love. (173)
When we love by intention and will, by showing care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, our love satisfies. (179)
When we experience true love it may feel as though our lives are in danger; we may feel threatened. (182)
True love is unconditional, but to truly flourish it requires an ongoing commitment to constructive struggle and change. (185)
And how can any of us communicate with men who have been told all their lives that they should not express what they feel. (185)
!!!!!!!!
To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power. (187)
Eleven: Loss - Loving Into Life and Death
This chapter looked at grief, and as someone who has dealt with little grief in my life, it was eye-opening and beautiful.
Love empowers us to live fully and die well. Death becomes, then, not an end to life but a part of living. (197)
Grief is a burning of the heart, an intense heat that gives us solace and release. (201)
By learning to love, we learn to accept change. Without change, we cannot grow. (205)
Twelve: Healing - Redemptive Love
I think this was the clincher that made Eve send me the book - love as healing power! We need to accept the hopefulness of love to restore us from the hopelessness we feel from the loss of love and the painful experiences of life. Whether that is romantic love, family love, or the friendships we carry with us - love has the power to transform us, to restore us, to redeem us, to heal us. Love is the life force behind everything we do.
The practice of loving is the healing force that brings sustained peace. It is the practice of love that transforms. As one gives and receives love, fear is let go. (220)
We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. (221)
Thirteen: Destiny - When Angels Speak of Love
This one again turns into some religious line of thinking but one note did get an underline:
Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth. (229)
To have loving friends, a supportive partner, a functional family, does not mean bad things don’t happen, to not mean you feel perfect 100% of the time, but it means you have learnt how to deal with those hard times, that you have the people to rely on in those moments, and then in return, you can be relied upon when you are needed.
I don’t know, this book’s made a lot of sense, has opened my eyes a lot, has spoken to the internal workings of my mind and my chest.
The sense of hopelessness that still lingers is the fact that not everyone I interact with will be armed with the same intentional practices of love and respect and care and communication - not that I’m going to completely transform from here on in, but you understand what I’m saying.
It’s all well and good embracing a love ethic and treating people with love as best we can, but if no one else is doing the same thing?? Cripes.
Anyway…
All the things I love about Evie T:
Her laugh
The way she gets a bit feral when she’s excited
The way she says ‘I went to school with someone called xyz’ and I fall for it everytime
The way she types
Virgo moon
The fact she messaged me on BeReal about living in Bristol
The fact she sent me a fricking book just cause
The way she says nsvdb
The love she has for everyone around her, and the way she’s learning to love herself like that too
Her endless wisdom
The fact she’s here and I get to talk to her whenever I want
The fact our brains think of the same dumb shit at the same time
The way she looks in the little blue hat
The way she smokes NYE ciggies on the porch
PLUMBLE !!!!!!!!
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