That was why a book by another Black woman, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, was so important to me. This is one of the endearing teachings of All About Love: our society shapes our conception of what love can be and our perception of how we can give or receive it. She is rightfully critical of books like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus-yet she is also perhaps more tolerant, or at least more understanding, of them than I have been, for she has lived longer and loved more than I have so far.

She is responding to these texts and ideas, building upon them, or considering them and then rebutting them.Īs you might expect, hooks approaches frameworks of love from a feminist lens. She is not the first person to write about love this way, nor will she be the last, and her careful acknowledgement of those who came before her reminds us not to read a writer in a vacuum. She frequently dropped the name of a book title that I knew I should look up. Indeed, something I loved about All About Love is the way that hooks consistently cites her sources. Now, I don’t want to erase what came before. So to hear this noted feminist writer who didn’t identify as asexual or aromantic come right out of the gate and frame love in such a diverse and inclusive way? Wow. Yet my platonic relationships are still incredibly important to me-if not more important, consequently-and are loving. I have no desire to have or intention of having a partner in the traditional, romantic sense of the word. As I have shared in many of my previous reviews, I am asexual and aromantic. I loved it, every word.Ī great deal of what hooks writes about certainly pertains to romantic love, yet from the very beginning she makes it clear that she is writing about all kinds of love.

Where do I start? Do I lament sheepishly how I’ve slept on bell hooks my entire adult life, and it is only now, at thirty-three, now that she has passed, that I’ve made time to read even one of her books? Do I confess that this was a revelation, that it was exactly the book I needed here and now? This review will be purely encomium, for that is what I feel about All About Love: New Visions.

Love by bell hooks