I recommend bell hook’s novel, All About Love: New Visions, to almost everyone I meet. I’d argue it’s one of the most important一somehow overlooked一novels from the 20th century.
I say overlooked because it isn’t one of those standardly assigned reading books during high school like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird or George Orwell’s 1984.Â
I read the book for the first time during my Honors Composition and Rhetoric course in my first year of college. I was taken by the author’s poignant analysis of love and its role in our culture. It was one of the first times I heard someone talk about love with objectivity and eloquence.Â
Gloria Jean Watkins, known by the pen name Bell Hooks, was an American author, theorist, social critic, and distinguished educator. Her writing centered on ideas about race, feminism, class, and the intersectionality of all three. In just eleven chapters, All About Love: New Visions explores the role of love in modern society.
Hooks’s analysis is unique in that she presents a static definition of love with a framework of what it means to love and be loved by another person. Hooks offers a definition taken from M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, defining love as
“the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
– M. Scott Peck
Hooks asserts that to fulfill this definition of love, there are six necessary ingredients: “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”
A constant critique throughout the novel is our societal tendency to treat love as a vague and elusive emotion. We are not taught to love in school, and sometimes, what we are taught to think is love is something else entirely. hooks suggests that not only can love be precisely defined, but it should also be categorized as a verb rather than a noun.
“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”
– M. Scott Peck
Hooks takes a revolutionary approach in decentering gender from the conversation of love. Her perspective is refreshing, as many self-help books erroneously prioritize gender in their discussion of heterosexual relationships. Popular titles like Why Men Love Bitches by Sherri Argove or Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray find their entire basis in a gendered analysis of love and relationships. Hooks proposes that this sort of thinking is inherently dehumanizing, as it prioritizes one’s gender identity over one’s humanity. While Hooks admits that gender identity can impact the experience of love, she explores love as an omnipresent, transformative force of the human experience.
Hooks also sees love as a force transcending the boundaries of romance. In the novel, she explores love in all its forms: self-love, familial love, love of community, spiritual love, and love within friendship. She emphasizes that to lead a fulfilling life, love must be practiced holistically in all its iterations, not just in a romantic context. She critiques the notion that romantic love should be the ultimate goal, instead suggesting that the practice of love in all areas of life can lead to an equally transcendent experience. In shifting the conversation about love away from romance, Hooks offers a more expansive idea of what love can be.Â
Although All About Love: New Visions was published in 1999, its ideas are equally relevant and revolutionary today. It is one of those rare works that stand the test of time while providing accurate, tangible advice on better incorporating love into one’s life. It is a must-read because it acts as a how-to guide on practicing love in its truest form, and with hook-up culture on the rise and fewer young people dating than ever before, we could all use some guidance. Perhaps if the novel were more widely read, love would be less of a mystery and more of a natural practice.