All About Love: New Visions | bell hooks

What is love? As we learn in the first chapter, many books have been written on the topic of love, but few ever give a definition of what exactly they mean by "love". This first chapter concludes, alas, without giving us the definition of love that this book will follow. We're in for a bumpy ride.

The book's subtitle "New Visions" refers to the domains and concepts that "love" will be brought into contact and contrast with in this book. What do death, belief, romance, or forgiveness have got to do with love? What role does honesty play? Some of these thirteen connections are thought provoking and fresh, while a few are bland or might just not hit the taste of the reader.

The writing is eclectic, pulling from a breadth of other texts and personal experiences of the author. This does not always work out, as claims and ideas of different spheres, rigor, and usefulness are mixed together; Personal anecdotes are interspersed with academic writings and bible stories. Thus, particular attention is required of the reader to disentangle which ideas are meant to be taken literally and which are more of an inspiration.

Finally, the problem I alluded to in the first paragraph, that there's no definition of love, also is the problem that closes out the book. There is no conclusion, nothing that ties these "visions" together at the end. The best idea might be to approach this whole book more like a collection of poems, like different viewpoints on a topic, giving it a vague shape and leaving you to feel out the rest.

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