The love we deserve: reflections on bell hook’s “All About Love”

What is “love” anyway?

Happy Sunday suge! I hope your week was kind to you, and if it wasn’t ,well, I hope next week will be better. These past few weeks, or so I found myself suggesting the book All About Love by bell hooks more than a couple of times. Each time I suggested it, I was more often than not met with “why should I read it?” Or “what about it” and I would just reply with, “All about it”! To be honest this kind of sent me spiraling, because I never anticipated a response like “what about it?” In reference to love. In one of these conversations there was the topics of marriage and friendship, and I kept wondering, how do you have these things without love? Something about me, suge, is that I feel extremely deeply. I’ve never been a superficial person, you can ask my momma! So after intense introspection and meditation on love, I came back with limited answers and knew I needed to reread All About Love by bell hooks.

And per usual, bell helped me to sort out my overwhelming and sometimes intimidating thoughts. All About Love (along with The Great Gatsby) basically live in my secret pocket. I actually just joked on twitter (yes, twitter) that I needed a new copy because my copy had been so loved on. But yet, I still cling to it like my last lifeline; to keep me grounded when I feel like I’ll float away at a moment’s notice. There’s something about how bell writes that gets to the heart of what love is, what it’s not, and how we can practice it in our messy, complicated lives.

All About Love is no easy read, not because it’s difficult to understand, but because it asks you to do some real soul searching. But when I say it’s worth it? Baby, it’s worth it. It’s like sitting down with that one elder in the community that everyone knows; they’ve got the right words to say, the ones that push you to reflect and dig deep.

Even though this book first came out over two decades ago, it remains so relevant today that it’s almost eerie. You’d think, with all the ways the world has shifted, something in bell’s words would feel outdated but no. If anything, her thoughts on love, honesty, and healing feel like they were written for this exact moment, especially for Black women like who’ve carried more than our fair share of heartache and hope through the years.

One of the first things that struck me about the book **is how bell emphasizes that love is an action, not just a feeling. Lord knows, we’ve been conditioned to think love is something that just happens to us, like a summer rainstorm or the smell of magnolias on a humid night. We’ve been taught to fall into love, as if it’s something passive. But no, that is not the case here. bell says love is a choice, a commitment to care, respect, and nurture.

And, suge, when I first read that, I had to sit with it for a minute. How many times have I expected love to just fix itself when things went sideways? How often have I let love slide, thinking it was strong enough to withstand the pressures of life without my active involvement? Too many times, if I’m being honest. bell’s reminder that love is an ongoing practice, a conscious decision we make every day, is one that’s stayed with me. It’s something I return to every time I pick up the book, especially when life feels a little too chaotic and love a little too distant.

When we talk about relevance, this book is like a mirror held up to today’s world. Y’all know we’re living in some trying times. Division, loneliness, and mistrust are running rampant, and it feels like everybody’s walking around with their hearts closed off and guards up. All About Love speaks to this, how modern society is so disconnected from love, and how it impacts everything from our relationships to our communities.

bell talks about how capitalism, materialism, and patriarchy get in the way of real love. Baby, if you know me, you know, how much hate in my heart I have for capitalism, materialism and especially misogynoir. Now, I don’t know about you, but every time I turn on the TV or scroll through my phone, I see what bell was talking about. We’re told to hustle, to focus on success, to get to the bag! But in the pursuit of all that, we’re losing touch with love. Not just romantic love, but love for ourselves, love for our neighbors, love for the world. It’s hard not to feel a little hardened by the times we live in, but that’s exactly why this book matters so much right now. It’s a call back to what’s real, to what can sustain us when everything else falls apart.

One of the reasons I continue to find my way back to this book, is because I’ve been hurt by love. And I bet most of us have. Whether it’s the love that wasn’t returned, the love that broke us down, or the love we lost along the way, All About Love doesn’t shy away from the fact that love can be painful. bell speaks with tenderness about how we’ve been wounded, true, but she also reminds us that love, real love, is healing.

Now, this part of the book is not easy, because it asks us to look at our past, to reflect on where love went wrong. But it’s also full of hope. bell hooks believes that we can heal through love, that love can be a radical, transformative force in our lives. And, I wholeheartedly agree. She invites us to move beyond the fairy tales and fantasies, to stop waiting for love to just fall into our laps, and to start loving with intention and vulnerability.

What I appreciate most about this is how she calls for honesty in love, honesty with ourselves and with each other. She tells us to stop pretending like love is something we don’t need, to stop wearing these masks of independence and self-sufficiency when, deep down, we’re longing for connection. There’s a certain kind of freedom in admitting that, yes, we need love to survive, to thrive even. And there’s power in knowing that we can create that love for ourselves and for each other.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about how this book resonates as a Black woman, especially one who grew up in the South. bell hooks, may she rest in peace, was a Black woman who knew the unique challenges we face when it comes to love. The world has not always been kind to us, and sometimes that hardness seeps into how we love ourselves and each other. We’ve been taught to be strong, to endure, to just keep going, even when love seems like the farthest thing from our reach.

But bell’s words remind me that love is our birthright. Not just romantic love, but love in all its forms. Love of self, love of family, love of community, love of justice. She says we deserve to be loved, cherished, and cared for, not just in spite of what we’ve been through, but because of it. And there’s something so healing about reading those words, knowing they come from a place of deep understanding.

As I reflect on my own journey with love growing up in the deep south, learning from the women who came before me, watching how they loved fiercely in the face of so much, I feel a kinship with bell. She’s speaking to the part of me that knows love is both tender and fierce, that it can be soft but also strong enough to carry us through.

At its heart, All About Love is a book about liberation. bell call for readers to free ourselves from the confines of a loveless world and build something better, something truer. She believes love can transform not just our personal lives, but the world itself. And, suge, that’s a message I think we all need to hear, especially today.

In these pages, you’ll find the wisdom to love better not just your partners or friends, but yourself. You’ll find permission to love with your whole heart, to be vulnerable, to let love be messy and imperfect, because that’s where the real growth happens. bell’s vision of love is expansive and radical, and it’s one that, if we embrace it, could change everything.

So, every time I’m feeling lost in love or when the world feels too heavy, I come back to All About Love. It’s like sitting down at the dining room table with my grandmother, poking her brain while she play’s spades on her laptop. It reminds me that love is a practice, a choice, and a power we can wield to create a better world. And in a world that seems to be getting colder by the day, that’s exactly the kind of love we need.

If you haven’t read it yet, pick it up. And if you’ve already read it, like me, maybe it’s time to pull it off the shelf again. bell’s words will meet you where you are, and they’ll guide you where you need to go. You can find a link to the book here and I’ll see you next time, all my love, Brya