Bell Hooks is a cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of our nation's leading public
intellectual by The Atlantic Monthly, as well as one of Utne Reader's 100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life,
she is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world. Previously
a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is now a Distinguished Professor
of English at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of more
than seventeen books, including All About Love: New Visions; Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work; Wounds of
Passion: A Writing Life; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Killing Rage: Ending Racism; Art on My Mind: Visual
Politics; and Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life. She lives in New York City.
Sample Chapter
Chapter One
The men in my life have always been the folks who are wary of using the word "love" lightly. They
are wary because they believe women make too much of love. And they know that what we think love means is not always
what they believe it means. Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word "love" is the source
of our difficulty in loving. If our society had a commonly held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of
loving would not be so mystifying. Dictionary definitions of love tend to emphasize romantic love, defining love
first and foremost as "profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, especially when based on
sexual attraction." Of course, other definitions let the reader know one may have such feelings within a context
that is not sexual. However, deep affection does not really adequately describe love's meaning.
The vast majority of books on the subject of love work hard to avoid giving clear definitions. In the introduction
to Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love she declares "Love is the great intangible." A few sentences
down from this she suggests: "Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on
what it is." Coyly, she adds, "We use the word love in such a sloppy way that it can mean almost nothing
or absolutely everything." No definition ever appears in her book that would help anyone trying to learn the
art of loving. Yet she is not alone in writing of love in ways that cloud our understanding. When the very meaning
of the word is cloaked in mystery, it should not come as a surprise that most people find it hard to define what
they mean when they use the word "love."
Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. The word
"love" is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we
would all love better if we used it as a verb. I spent years searching for a meaningful definition of the word
"love," and was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book
The Road Less Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of Erich Fromm, he defines love as "the
will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Explaining
further, he continues, "Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action.
Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love." Since the choice must be made to nurture
growth, this definition counters the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually.
Everyone who has witnessed the growth process of a newborn child from the moment of birth on sees clearly that
before language is known, before the identity of caretakers is recognized, babies respond to affectionate care.
Usually they respond with sounds or looks of pleasure. As they grow older they respond to affectionate care by
giving affection, cooing at the sight of a welcomed caretaker. Affection is only one ingredient of love. To truly
love we must learn to mix various ingredients-care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as
well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult
to be loving as we grow older. We start out committed to the right path but go in the wrong direction. Most of
us learn early on to think of love as a feeling. When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect with them, that
is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to
us is called "cathexis." In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting
with loving." We all know how often individuals feeling connected to someone through the process of cathecting
insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting or neglecting them. Since their feeling is that
of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.
Review
"Each offering from bell hooks is a major event, as she has so much to give us."
-- Maya Angelou
"She provides a refreshing spiritual treatise that steps outside the confines of the intellect and into
the wilds of the heart."
-- Seattle Weekly
"Like love, this book is worth the commitment."
-- Toronto Sun
HarperCollins Publishers Web Site, May, 2001
Summary
"The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet...we would all love to 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
provacative and intensely personel, the renowned scholar, cultural critic, and feminist skewers our view of love
as romance. In its place she offers a proactive new ethic for a people and a society bereft with lovelessness.
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explode th question "What is love?" her answers
strike at both the mind and heart. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for emotional connection
and society's failure to provide a model for learning to love. 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 the
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 affirmation of just how profoundly she can.