Reviews tagging 'Grief'

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

27 reviews

maiasnowdrop's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Grief, Death, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, and Racism

bookfriend8's review

inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.25

an excellent book on how we can practice love to improve interpersonal relationships and society as a whole. many things could be resolved if people learned how to truly love themselves and others. i particularly enjoyed this work by hooks because it doesn't only reflect on romantic love, but also on general feelings of compassion and mutual respect, which she argues are lacking in the capitalist, divisive world we live in. the book had christian undertones, though; as a non-christian certain parts lost me a bit (especially the final chapter) 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Sexism, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, and Racism

Minor: Grief, Addiction, and Death

kers_tin's review

inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Grief

Minor: Child abuse, Death, Suicide, Racism, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Gun violence, and Misogyny

cosmic_blooms's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, and Child abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Death, Grief, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, and Physical abuse

Minor: Sexual content and Body shaming

sderi's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Racism, Mental illness, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, Abandonment, Chronic illness, Death, Gaslighting, Grief, Infidelity, Sexism, and Toxic relationship

amaezone's review

informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

I was wondering "what is it with love and our culture ?" (A certain type of) love seems to be everywhere in the media and in social norms, and nowhere in theory and philosophy, and general social sciences. Then I picked up this book, and it helped me articulate a lot of things. For most of the book I just thought "that's it exactly!"

Essential reading.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism

Minor: Death, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Grief

abyissmal's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny

Moderate: Grief and Child abuse

keeganrb's review

informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Sexism, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Child abuse, and Grief

Minor: Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Addiction

amgarrido's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

jayisreading's review

reflective slow-paced

2.25

I’m a bit surprised that I ended up not enjoying All About Love as much as I thought I would. I greatly admire bell hooks and the knowledge she has shared with the world (Teaching to Transgress is one that I found quite impactful). I entered All About Love to learn about… well, love. I suppose I did, but I didn’t anticipate it to be as spiritually guided as it ended up being. Not that this is a bad thing, but there was almost a New Age quality to this book that made me roll my eyes a little.

More than that, though, I was shocked that despite the incredible focus on the ways in which issues such as misogyny, sexism, and capitalism stop us from truly loving one another, hooks’ ideas did not apply to everyone. For example, her comment on Monica Lewinsky (called a “young woman”) as “greedy” took me by surprise. What happened to respect, which she emphasized was a necessary part of love? I also took issue with hooks’ insistence that queer people should find ways to stay in touch with toxic family members. This isn’t a possibility for many members of the queer community, especially if they want to put their happiness and well-being at the forefront, which are important because they lead to the finding of a deep sense of love that they weren’t given before.

I want to step away from the criticisms to at least highlight things I appreciated about this book, though. For one, I truly appreciated that hooks challenged the idea of love being exclusive to romance. I was most taken to her points on how we can learn from platonic love and community building to deepen other forms of love. I also liked that she showed love to be a multifaceted thing, that it is comprised of care, respect, responsibility, commitment, among other traits that displays the complexity of loving.

All things considered, writing about love is a huge undertaking, especially to break it down the way hooks did. However, I think this book is of its time (first published in 1999) in its language and understanding of the world. If there’s anything I’ve come to realize while making my way through this book, it’s that love is ever-changing and difficult to explain given everything that’s happening in the world every day. hooks tried, and I think there were some valuable points to take away from this book, but it didn’t make the impact I was hoping it would.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny and Sexism

Moderate: Grief, Toxic relationship, Child abuse, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Death, and Emotional abuse