What Is Love?: A Review of All About Love by bell hooks

Post Author: Rev. Merianna Harrelson

Author and cultural critic bell hooks has recently made the news because she has been listed as one of the authors whose work Governor DeSantis cites as problematic for students. Her writing has challenged and engaged students in teachers to use their voice to stand up and to learn who they are. 

This recent concern isn’t the first time bell hooks’ writing has ended up on a banned book list and it will certainly not be the last. Her books Black Looks: Race and Representation and Ain’t I Woman: Black Women and Feminism often end up banned because of their honesty in depicting the Black experience. She viewed her writing as activism. When she told the stories through her books and her poetry, she was asking her readers to consider whose voices were being left out of our culture and our society. Perhaps even more importantly, she invited her readers and students to ask why those voices were being left out. 

I first encountered her poetry and was enraptured with the beauty of her words. Most recently, I have found myself in the pages of her book All About Love: New Visions. In the same way her other work asks her readers to ask questions about what they thought they knew, so too does this book ask readers, What is love?

She wastes no time in revealing that our concepts and ideas about love are formed in our family of origin. If there was abuse or neglect in our family of origin, then our idea of love gets intertwined in a false understanding of what true love is. Oftentimes, that neglect and abuse nestle deeply within the person and result in a feeling of being unlovable. She explains: 

Only love can heal the wounds of the past. However, the intensity of our woundedness often leads to a closing of the heart, making it impossible for us to give or receive the love that is given to us. To open our hearts more fully to love’s power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice. (xxix)

She continues to explain for those who have felt unloved or unlovable in their lives, the key to healing the abuse and neglect comes from self-love, a concept many are uncomfortable with because it seems “selfish.” She argues that until we are able to offer ourselves love, we will be unable to receive love, true love, given to us by others. 

hooks writes, “Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else” (67). 

Perhaps bell hooks was not only a writer, activist, and cultural critic, but also a prophet because she speaks the message of the gospel. Maybe she in her writing has uncovered a revival that will help our churches weather the storm of a pandemic. Maybe this is the core of what we need to share each week as we gather: You are worthy of love. You are beloved. Now go and share that love with others.

Our culture has lost a great voice in bell hooks, but her writing lives on. No matter how many people try to ban her books, still readers will find her words, urging them to know that they are loved and their voice matters.