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Staff Pick
This book was recommended to me by my partner, and has since changed my life and my view of love and loving in every aspect of my experience. There are many huge, hard truths in this deeply personal book, and I highly recommend it to everyone looking to broaden their understanding of love and relating. Recommended By Deana R., Powells.com
My ex-partner and I read this together right after our breakup, and it really helped us process a lot! bell hooks is not cynical about love, but she also doesn't view it as a fairy tale. This book has made love feel less scary and more empowering. Not just romantic love, but also self-love, family love, and friend love. Recommended By Maddy F., Powells.com
We're taught to think of love as something that happens to us. It's a magical but altogether passive experience. In her deeply personal and emphatic All about Love, renowned social activist and feminist bell hooks asserts that, in fact, love is a choice we must all make and it's not nearly as abstract or elusive as many of us have come to believe. The book not only explores the role of love in our lives and the ways our culture has distorted its meaning, but guides us — with clear definitions and examples — toward a better understanding of how to cultivate it. If you've ever wondered why some relationships stand the test of time while others crumble, you should read this book. Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' Love Song to the Nation trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
"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.
Review
“She provides a refreshing spiritual treatise that steps outside the confines of the intellect and into the wilds of the heart.” Seattle Weekly
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“Like love, this book is worth the commitment.” Toronto Sun
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“Each offering from bell hooks is a major event, as she has so much to give us.” Maya Angelou
About the Author
bell hooks was an influential cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of America's leading public intellectuals, she was a charismatic speaker and writer who taught and lectured around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks was the author of more than 17 books, including the New York Times bestseller All About Love: New Visions; Salvation: Black People and Love; Communion: the Female Search for Love, as well as the landmark memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood.