All About Love

Back of the Book

"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, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society's failure to provide a model for learning to love. 

As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. 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 "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.

We Love It Because

This luminous meditation on the processes and failings of the human psyche to allow practices of love is a reckoning, and required reading. bell hooks’ thesis that love is more than a dismissable abstraction, and her attempts to establish love as a political act against late capitalist brutality and its attempts to isolate us from one another remains extremely compelling.

Memorable Passage

Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.

About the Author

bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, was a trailblazing American author, feminist theorist, and cultural critic whose work has been instrumental in shaping discussions on race, gender, and intersectionality. A prolific writer, hooks authored numerous groundbreaking books, including Ain't I a Woman? and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, where she challenged traditional feminist discourse to be more inclusive of the experiences of women of color. Known for her insightful and accessible writing style, hooks played a pivotal role in bridging the gap between academia and the broader public, making feminist theory more accessible and relevant. Her commitment to social justice and her exploration of the intersections of race, class, and gender have left an indelible mark on feminist scholarship. bell hooks is worth knowing for her transformative influence on feminist thought, her advocacy for intersectional perspectives, and her dedication to creating a more just and equitable world through her powerful words and ideas.

Recommended By

Tiana Marie Combes 

 
 
 
 
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind