Book review:
all about love: new visions
by bell hooks (2000) Courage does not even begin to describe what it takes to write about love,
such an elusive and often indescribable emotion, act, and experience that
touches us all. bell hooks accepted the challenge because she believes that
our nation is turning away from love. Being the social critic and thinker
that she is, she found it disillusioning when she was not able to find a "tell-us-all-about-love-book"
herself. This came at a time when she and her most intimate listener and lover
(with whom she had endless discussions about love) were breaking up. In continuing
her search for answers through questions and conversations around the nation
she was struck with our own cultural confusion about love. It was out of this
search and struggle that all about love
was born. The book addresses a number of different forms of love starting with very
personal and sometimes rather dark renditions of hooks' own childhood
(and later adult) experiences of love. Along with several different aspects
of love such as honesty, values, justice, commitment, loss, mutuality, and
spirituality, she also discusses the act and experience of love within the
context of romance, mutuality, community, greed, loss, healing, and destiny.
It is in her convincing critique of our current views of romance, that she
presents her well-established feminist self. She does so by making some very
strong assertions that would have us changing our entire culture and language
of romantic love. For instance, she believes that we should change our language
of "falling in love" (which liberates us from the responsibility
of our actions and takes away choice), to "choosing to love,"
thus implying a more active and responsible act. hooks borrows her definition
of love from Scott Peck by describing it as " the will to nurture one's
own or another's spiritual growth." Throughout the book, bell hooks presents most of her thoughts about love
in terms of that which gets in its way (i.e. obstacles) and that which generates
it (generative resources). Obstacles range from religious segregation to our
worship of individuation and our culture of several "ism's,"
narcissism, sexism, and consumerism. Fear, another obstacle, is viewed as
"the primary force that upholds structures of domination" because
it promotes separation and sameness — thus, "making difference,
of any kind, appear as a threat." In referring to her own family as
"dysfunctional," hooks also addresses how confused messages about
love in such families can also lead us to lovelessness and disconnectedness.
It is this disconnectedness and isolation that hooks believes has led us to
our current hunger for spirituality. It is not surprising then that most of the generative sources of love she
discusses center around spirituality in the form of loving practice, communalism,
and healthy interdependence. Although she borrows from, and cites, several
different spiritual writers in her work (e.g. Merton, Peck, Kornfield, Williamson,
Viorst, and Salzberg, among others), many of her thoughts are founded in Buddhist
thinking and practice. Even though the book may seem to be a "fast read," I found it
worked best for me to digest it slowly and in small chunks for two reasons.
Quite simply, it was my way of limiting the bad, painfully negative parts
and extending the good, inspirational parts. In other words, a "slower
read" curbed some of hooks' negativity and somewhat slanted views
to limited doses, while, in contrast, it extended her beautifully written
nuggets of enlightenment and hope. It was in words like "we too can
choose serenity in the midst of struggle" that I found reassurance,
peace, and nurturance. I think that is hooks' gift to us in her book,
her own hope that true love is felt and found. Reviewed by Silvia Echevarria-Doan, Ph.D. |
