bell hooks Taught Me All About Love
What is love? With millions of songs, endless films, shows, and now, social media content dedicated to this one word, do we really understand what it is? bell hooks’ “All About Love: New Visions,” reveals the flawed understanding of love that exists within society and encourages readers to rethink its true meaning.
Love is often defined as a feeling and expression. bell hooks challenges what we’ve so often been told about love, stating, “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.” The author points to the varying dimensions of love, which pivots from the tendency to believe that love is simply a strong affection. Categorizing love as simply a feeling and expression often ignores the decisions and actions that make love what it is, and so hooks reminds readers that love is a verb and requires action.
According to hooks, romantic love is not always the most important love. Instead, she emphasizes the importance of love within families and friendships and reveals how they are connected. “Friendship is the place where the great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community. Learning to love in friendships empowers us in ways that enable us to bring this love to other interactions with family or with romantic bonds.” hooks emphasizes the importance of community as a place to nurture love and reflects on her own experiences with love during her childhood. The author speaks on the use of corporal punishment and the ways it perpetuates the false notion that abuse can coexist with love. Along with assessing adolescence, hooks also explores the ways in which capitalism and patriarchy govern the way we love. “Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth.” As she deconstructs gender roles and materialism, she also emphasizes how these ideals hinder our experience of love.
bell hooks peels back every layer of love and defines it in a revolutionary way. She lays self-love and spirituality as the foundation for loving relationships. “Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment. Self-love cannot flourish in isolation.” While there are a number of takeaways from the novel, the truth is that every chapter hurts a bit. “All About Love” isn’t your typical book; it is a journey of self-reflection and discovery. Readers on this journey are encouraged to relearn and reevaluate what they have been taught about love. bell hooks encourages us to decolonize our minds and heart, which is no easy task. This book isn’t a one-time read, and it is a perfect reminder to take some time to reflect on the love you’ve experienced throughout your life. From your childhood to the present day, your view of love shapes more than you may think. You may need to open this book multiple times to either rethink some of your patterns or have a clearer conversation about what love is. “All About Love” is a novel that expresses a new meaning and significance each time you read. As readers unlearn and learn bell hooks’ “All About Love,” they conclude the novel knowing that love is transformative, spiritual, truthful, and, most importantly, revolutionary.
Favorite Quotes:
“Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give to yourself…The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken.”
“…politics, religion, the workplace, domestic households, intimate relations- should and could have as their foundation a love ethic. A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well. To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives, our society would need to embrace change.”
“True love is unconditional but to truly flourish it requires an ongoing commitment to construct struggle and change”