All About Love Bell Hooks Pdf Download
Matthew Pendergrass
All About Love: New Visions is a book by bell hooks published in 2000 that discusses aspects of romantic love in modern society. The book is organized into thirteen chapters, in which each chapter discusses an aspect of love. Within these chapters, Hooks also provides the reader with reflections on her own journey of love, as well as analysis of society's teachings of love.
In the preface of the book, bell hooks writes about being abandoned from love in her girlhood. While she does not provide the reader with context to the details of that abandonment, hooks reflects to the reader that she realized that all the years she was looking for love, she was truly longing to heal from the initial abandonment. hooks writes that when she finally got herself moved on from that incident and ready to love in the present , she felt that the world she lives in (our world) became "loveless."[1] hooks ends the preface of the book to write to the reader why she wrote about love. She writes, "I write of love to bear witness both to the danger in this movement, and to call for a return to love. Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak."[1]
[1]In this section, bell hooks discusses why in particular the act of loving has changed recently. Hooks discusses how women are "encouraged by sexist socialization to pretend and manipulate, to lie as a way to please" and how men are taught to create a false self that is not vulnerable, as a way to remain powerful.
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.
- hooks describes the inspiration and solace she finds in graffiti art declaring, "The search for love continues even in the face of great odds" (p. xv). Where have you found similar signs that have restored your faith in love?
- Historically, how have the demands of love for women been different from those for men? How have they differed for adults and children? What does hooks suggest about these distinctions?
- Discuss the way in which hooks uses her personal experience throughout this book. How does her personal experience enhance her assertions? Which vignette do you findparticularly meaningful?
- hooks describes the allure of lying in relation to the allure of power. What are the lies you tell to feel powerful? How do our concepts of power -- born from the patriarchal culture we inhabit -- keep us from love? What role does greed play and where does it come from?
- hooks probes the gap between the values many people "claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and action, theory and practice" (p. 90). How does our culture reward those who nurture this gap? What changes would we have to make in society to nurture and inspire the closing of this gap?
- If we must sacrifice "our old selves in order to be changed by love" (p. 188), what is it that we're giving up?
- Although she warns against attempting to return to the past rather than forging ahead, hooks advocates repairing and restoring family bonds. Why is this an important goal? How do these bonds enable us to live with love in all areas of our lives?
- What are the political ramifications of hooks's visions of love? Is love a political issue?
- Look over the chapter titles in All About Love. If you were to add a chapter, what would it be?
- Why do we fear love? Are we more afraid of surrendering ourselves to love or of living without love? What sacrifices does love require? What relief and salve can love offer? Is it possible to be too damaged, too wounded to love?
- How has All About Love enhanced, contradicted, challenged, altered your vision of love?
About the Author: 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.
The Barnes & Noble Review
In her compelling book, All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks offers radical new ways to think about love. Here, hooks, one of our most acute social critics, takes the themes that put her on the map the relationship between love and sexuality, and the interconnectedness between the public and the private and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is more important than all other bonds. hooks was inspired to write this book by her own difficult childhood during which she felt love was not nurtured, and by the ending of a longtime relationship. hooks examines the state of love in our society, why love is elusive, and how to open our hearts to love once again. "I feel our nation's turning away from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my girlhood," hooks writes in her preface. "Turning away we risk moving into a wilderness of spirit so intense we might never find our way home again. I write of love to bear witness both to the dangers in this movement, and to call for a return to love." As she has so brilliantly done in her previous works, hooks poses fascinating questions that go to the core of our being and make us think in radical new ways. By challenging us to think of love as an action, not a feeling, hooks offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal lives. How can love be an action, not just a feeling? We say we love our children, but are we kind to them? How does even the tiniest lie damage love? How can we move beyond the superficial andtrivializednotions of love to embrace the true love we yearn for? How does the narcissism of society keep us from true self-love? Why have so many of us "failed" at love and become cynical as a result? By exploring these questions and so many others in clear, thought-provoking chapters, hooks presents a way to cultivate different kinds of love in our hectic lives. All About Love examines love in childhood, love in community, spiritual love, self-love, and love in a number of cultural contexts. hooks urges readers to look at the love we share with friends as a guide to how other kinds of love can grow. She explains that self-acceptance and positive thinking are critical if we are to embrace love in our own life and our community. She helps us realize that we must value all types of love equally. Imaginative and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation. All About Love, written in vivid, provocative, and sensual language, is as much about culture as it is about intimacy. It is bell hooks at her most inspiring. In exploring the ties between love and loss hooks takes on a journey that is sacred and transcendent. Her destination: our own hearts and communities.
Taking on yet another popular topic in her role as cultural critic, hooks blends the personal and the psychological with the philosophical in her latest book--a thoughtful but frequently familiar examination of love American style. A distinguished professor of English at City College in New York City, she explains her sense of urgency about confronting a subject that countless writers have analyzed: "I feel our nation's turning away from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my girlhood. Turning away, we risk moving in a wilderness of spirit so intense we may never find our way home again." With an engaging narrative style, hooks presents a series of possible ways to reverse what she sees as the emotional and cultural fallout caused by flawed visions of love largely defined by men who have been socialized to distrust its value and power. She proposes a transformative love based on affection, respect, recognition, commitment, trust and care, rather than the customary forms stemming from gender stereotypes, domination, control, ego and aggression. However, many of her insights about self-love, forgiveness, compassion and openness have been explored in greater depth by the legion of writers hooks quotes liberally throughout the book, such as John Bradshaw, Lucia Hodgson, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton and M. Scott Peck, among others. Still, every page offers useful nuggets of wisdom to aid the reader in overcoming the fears of total intimacy and of loss. Although the chapter on angels comes across as filler, hooks's view of amour is ultimately a pleasing, upbeat alternative to the slew of books that proclaim the demise of love in our cynical time. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
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