All About Love

I don't feel like this book about love actually cares for or respects its own audience, despite the many ways that it told me over and over that we need to have caring and respectful communities (which I don't entirely disagree with as a concept).

The amount of gender stereotypes made, even while claiming inclusiveness, is absurd. And it's weird how often she gave men excuses for their behaviour (despite saying we should be responsible for ourselves), while women were more often blamed for operating within the expected hierarchy (and frequently called manipulators). It routinely defaults to heterosexual romance, even when acknowledging the existence of queer people (though it seems like a very limiting vision of queer people, not even all of us).

I struggle with a great deal of the references to religion and the inclusion of people who have been outright harmful to society via their influence (like Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson). I'm baffled by the absolute nonsensical presentation of historical memory that was not at all very distant for the time she wrote this book (e.g., Bill Clinton's impeachment, the OJ Simpson trial).

Overall, I find this book troubling.

I've heard great things about bell hooks but I really didn't like this book. There were lots of sweeping statements and some gender stereotypes in very heterosexual examples. I don't understand why she needed a definition of love, and I don't agree that it has anything to do with spirituality, so it fell apart for me early. Lots of Christian stuff. Some things felt all over the place, like she had a dream of her "true love" then met him at a conference but he was already in a relationship? Then she says well not all love is romantic (for sure!) but doesn't follow up. How was this guy your true love? Did you form a deep friendship, do you keep in touch? Then angels came into play... She advocates for forgiveness and also urged her lesbian sister not to create distance with their homophobic parents... A lot just didn't work for me, even though I believe in a lot of her conclusions about the importance of friendship and community as love, how we're all harmed by capitalism and patriarchy. Maybe this was groundbreaking when it came out, but I didn't get much out of it.