I’ve just finished reading bell hooks' All About Love: New Visions and I’m excited to share a few final thoughts in 2024 on the space we give love in our lives and imaginations.
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I love love. It’s been a transformative and clarifying force in my life, shaping how I see the world and connect with humanity. I’m not embarrassed to share this about myself, even though society often makes talking about love (or even admitting a desire to love and be loved) as if it were a secret too risky to whisper aloud. It’s not a topic we study in school or think about in a critical manner in any formal setting. Yet, somehow, we’re expected to figure it out on our own, as if it should just come naturally.
POV: your parents won’t let you date until you’re 25 but start asking for grandchildren when you turn 26.
I recently finished All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks1, and it’s the first book I’ve read that takes a serious, thoughtful look at love. Published 24 years ago in 2000, it was timely. In 2024, it feels urgent. This book invites us into a refreshing and nuanced conversation about love, serious enough to challenge your pre-exisiting ideas but light enough to not overthink it. bell hooks’ words rise above the endless noise of social media chatter and fleeting soundbites.
When we hear the word “love,” many of us first imagine romantic love. Potentially we envision a soft, feminine, or easily dismissed concept as compared to today’s pressing world matters (war, the economy, elections, and so on).
bell hooks shows us just how essential love truly is and how our attitudes toward love reflect deeper flaws in our culture. What I appreciate most about her work is how she takes a massive, complex topic and renders it simple and accessible through her writing.
My main takeaway is that we should question everything we have learned about love until now and reexamine its place in our lives. Give love a definition. Examine love in self, family, friendship, and romantic partnership. Practice love in small and big ways.
I recommend reading it for yourself, but here are my favorite quotes:
Introduction Grace: Touched By Love
“It is easier to articulate the pain of love’s absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives.”
Chapter 1 Clarity: Give Love Words
“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”
“I am grateful to have been raised in a family that was caring, and strongly believe that had my parents been loved well by their parents they would have given that love to their children. They gave what they had been given—care. Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.”
Chapter 3 Honesty: Be True to Love
“Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend powerlessness.”
Chapter 4 Commitment: Let Love Be Love In Me
“Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.”
Chapter 6 Values: Living by a Love Ethic
“A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well.”
“Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture. No wonder then that we are a nation of people, the majority of whom, across race, class, and gender, claim to be religious, claim to believe in the divine power of love, and yet collectively remain unable to embrace a love ethic and allow it to guide behavior, especially if doing so would mean supporting radical change.”
Chapter 7 Greed: Simply Love
“Intense spiritual and emotional lack in our lives is the perfect breeding ground for material greed and overconsumption. In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced by the passion to possess.”
“The will to sacrifice on behalf of another, always present when there is love, is annihilated by greed.”
Chapter 9 Mutuality: The Heart of Love
“Giving is the way we also learn how to receive. The mutual practice of giving and receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love. A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming.”
Chapter 10 Romance: Sweet Love
“To be capable of critically evaluating a partner we would need to be able to stand back and look critically at ourselves, at our needs, desires, and longings.”
“Indeed, those among us who have been hurt, disappointed, disillusioned must open our hearts if we want love to enter. The act of opening is a way of seeking love.”
This is a late addition, but I’m including a clip from journalist John Seigenthaler’s A Word on Words in which bell hooks promotes and discusses the book in 1999. Listen to bell hooks in her own words:
More on love
Over the holiday break, I’ve been catching up on my favorite shows that require subtitles. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve had the mental space to sit and watch something with full attention, rather than having it playing in the background on a secondary screen. My two favorites from this past year are both based on popular novels and are passionate melodramas telling stories of friendship, familial love, and romantic love.
🇮🇹 My Brilliant Friend (Original Italian title: L'amica geniale) - Season 4
*SPOILER ALERT*
I’ve been watching this show since it premiered in 2018. The casting, acting, writing, cinematography, and overall storytelling is phenomenal. The series is based on novels by Elena Ferrante and follows the friendship between two young girls in 1950s Naples, Italy. Season one starts with 10-year old Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo navigating their youth and troubled neighborhood and by season four, the women are in their early thirties managing careers, children, and politics.
This season had me screaming at my laptop, “Lenù why!?!?!” for 4 episodes straight. Nino, who has been romantically linked to both Lila and Elena throughout the series, causes his usual drama but Elena (or Lenù), who has used her education to escape Napoli and become an accomplished author, is surprisingly and effortlessly stupid in love.
Lenù lost her mind and there was no way to break the spell, but thankfully Lila remains a good friend and eventually helps expose Nino’s many lies. Sometimes we only see what we’re ready to see.
An amazing watch, especially if you’d like to hear some beautiful Neopolitan accents.
🇲🇽 Like Water For Chocolate (Original Spanish title: Como agua para chocolate) - Season 1
*SPOILER ALERT*
Like Water for Chocolate is another HBO series based on Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel. The story follows 15-year-old Tita de la Garza, who falls in love with her childhood friend, Pedro Muzquiz. When Pedro asks Tita’s mother for her hand in marriage, she refuses, insisting that Tita will never marry. Instead, she offers Pedro Tita’s older sister Rosaura’s hand. Tita is devastated and can't understand why her mother seems to hate her.
With a touch of magical realism, each episode unfolds through the recipes Tita prepares for her family. Her emotions are infused into every dish. The storytelling is beautiful, and the tragic love affair only grows more intense as the series goes on.
Practice your Spanish while watching this one.
One more thing
I’m leaving you with the song I’ve loved most this year. Leon Bridges is one of my all-time favorite artists. *tearing up* We just don’t get musicians like this all that often who share beautiful, positive messages.
Happy new year everyone ✨ May love see you through.
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Thanks for reading! It’s a fun practice for me to write to gather my thoughts on these topics. Share with a friend if you’ve found my words interesting or helpful. Comment below if you have anything to add.
bell hooks (1952–2021), born Gloria Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, USA, was a renowned author and cultural critic celebrated for her powerful writings on intersectionality and feminism. She is most known for Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981), which explores the impact of sexism and racism on Black women throughout history. Adopting the pen name of her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, she intentionally used lowercase letters to shift focus from her identity to the ideas she championed.
Whitney! I adore everything bell hooks wrote. I am appreciating your notes and reflections. Wondering what else you’re reading!
I am looking forward to seeing it! The new actresses seem to have that spark.
From the younger actresses (who were brilliant) to the teenage and adult ones (spot on) and now the more empowered ones (Intriguing) I am sure the triptique works as a whole.
Bonus: The music is great each time as well.