Instead, hooks writes on love with much-needed care towards race, gender and class dynamics. She shuns the writing on neoliberal love that offers an escapist fantasy from reality, devoid of any communal sentiment. With her critical curiosity, hooks brings a voice of dissent into corporate publication. Rather than stumbling into it, there is intention and action behind loving and being loved.

Image courtesy of Getty Images.Įnvisioning love as something that happens accidentally or even instinctually robs people of the choice. Photograph of bell hooks by Karjean Levine. We refuse to risk defining love, fearful that many, if not most of us, have not been loved in our lives. According to hooks, we cling to love as an ambiguous force. hooks proclaims that love cannot coexist with abuse or oppression - a seemingly obvious statement that many still try to dispute. hooks describes love in detail - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment and trust, as well as honest and open communication.

This declaration guides hooks’ understanding towards love as a rich and generative force. Perched on her kitchen wall, the words “ The search for love continues even in the face of great odds” stand in bright colours. Hooks’ novel begins with her reflections on the photographs of the graffiti splashed across the construction walls hooks passed on her way to work. hooks devotes each chapter to an aspect of love, and every one nudges the reader towards the open arms of love’s embrace. Her book, All About Love: New Visions, works in tandem with two of hooks’ later books, Salvation: Black People and Love (2001) and Communion: The Female Search For Love (2002), in her pursuit of love’s truth. Image depicting three of hooks’ books on love. bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, was a formative writer and theorist in Black feminism with over thirty books and numerous essays published in her lifetime. In a society amassed with structural and interpersonal violence, bell hooks comforts a public plagued by lovelessness. For bell hooks, love is a verb, a practice. For most, love is an unknowable force - something beyond measure or rationale. What is love? With endless songs, novels, letters, poems written about love over millennia, it seems strange that that question has yet to find a widely-accepted answer.

Love by bell hooks