I’ve put off writing this review for weeks because I don’t want to be the bad feminist who says she didn’t enjoy reading bell hooks.
The thing is, I was really excited to read All About Love by bell hooks. I knew hooks was an important, influential, and respected writer. And the first few chapters were powerful. I had to limit myself to reading just a chapter a day, because I had to sit with my thoughts about families of origin, and honesty in relationships, and the whole meaning of love. Her thoughts on the difference between love and care, and whether abusive families actually love their children felt like being stabbed in the heart, and honestly, I’m still processing them.
Then I got to the chapter about spirituality, and it all fell apart for me.
I am not a spiritual person. I grew up religious and I have found incredible freedom, peace, and greater confidence in my core convictions by leaving all of that behind. I did not feel particularly spiritual when I was religious, and as such, I have never sought out another spiritual practice to replace the one I left behind. I respect my friends who practice loving and inclusive forms of spirituality and appreciate how important their spirituality is to them, and I believe in freedom of religion, but in general, spirituality is something that is very much not for me.
So to essentially be told that in order to love one must be spiritual felt like hooks was slamming a door in my face. It felt like this author, who was held up as a luminary of feminist thought, was telling me that I, personally, was incapable of love.
hooks draws so much on her Christian upbringing in All About Love that it feels like it should be labeled and marketed as a Christian book — except that she also brings in just enough ideas from Eastern religions that no Christian publisher would touch this manuscript. She does, at times, acknowledge the abuses that have been perpetuated in the name of Christianity, but almost seems to be buying into a “no true Scotsman” fallacy. The loving religion she experienced in her youth is true spirituality and anything that falls short of that has obviously been tainted by love of money and power… but still, you must have some spiritual path, no matter how much abuse or alienation you’ve experienced from members of spiritual practices.
That wasn’t my only problem with the book. It was, instead, the catalyst that caused me to be less accepting of the other problems.
For instance, All About Love was published in 1999 and so of course, like any 25-year-old book, it feels incredibly dated. A reference to how we all accepted the scary change of computers becoming commonplace gets a chuckle from this elder millennial who has gone on to adapt to the internet, smart phones, social media, cryptocurrency, and AI. But her attitudes towards Nicole Brown Simpson and Monica Lewinksy really showed the limits of how well we understood things like victim blaming and consent in the 90s. This especially stood out since I was reading this book right when OJ Simpson passed away and thus people were rehashing Nicole’s murder and OJ’s trial.
Even so, as I read this book, I could see why it became such a touchstone for many people. In a time when books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus were suggesting that men and women were somehow fundamentally wired differently, hooks was astutely pointing out how the different ways men and women acted in relationships had everything to do with both what we were actively taught, and what we absorbed from the society around us.
Of course, this being the late 90s, hooks only talks about men and women, and cisness seems to be implied. She does, occasionally, make mention of homosexual relationships. She also mentions convincing her lesbian sister not to estrange herself from homophobic relatives, which is, as they say, a choice.
I also feel like hooks had some great things to say about the importance of putting love into our communities, supporting each other and making decisions from a place of love rather than of fear or greed. As our city streets fill up with people forced to live in their cars or tents because they can’t afford rent; as genocides unfold before our eyes while we supply the weapons; as more and more laws get proposed to attempt to legislate trans people out of existence; we could really use more love for our fellow human beings (and, come to think of it, the non-human living things we share this world with).
All About Love is a classic for a reason. hooks is a luminary for a reason. But I was very much not the audience for this book. I for one would love recommendations for works that take a similar approach to considering the question of love, in all its expressions, without focusing so much in the spiritual or being bogged down in 90s-style feminism. Drop your suggestions in the comments!
CWs and TWs: Obviously the spirituality was a big trigger for me. There are discussions of child abuse, domestic abuse, religious abuse, sexism, and homophobia in this book, but nothing is particularly graphic.
Source and Format: I read this in paperback format, purchased from Nook & Cranny Books while I was picking up my book bingo cards.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): BIPOC Voices. bell hooks was an important Black woman author and however much I disagree with her on spirituality, we lost an influential voice when she passed away. I’m glad I took the time to read this book and gather the few nuggets of wisdom that resonated with me, even if I’m pretty sure I won’t be reading anything else by her.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 13 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 8 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.