all about love - bell hooks

The lack of capitalization is a sign of my respect for bell hooks and the way she moved me with her writing. I felt like I experienced the books in three parts. At first, it felt political, surprisingly contemporary, and not necessarily a book I would have chosen for myself. I am reading classics and books only highly recommended lists, in an effort to balance my more niche reading style and the one with too many business, self-help, mindset, longevity books on its shelves.

To start, the idea that love is itself political is one with which I had never spent time. Not only is our concept of love shaped by our external experiences, including those stemming from political and modern socioeconomic movements, but to love itself is a political act. I read this book around the same time that I was challenged on my view of political developments in modern East Asia. It helped me uncover the discomfort I felt that I could not claim a larger people as my own if I did not also extend the same limitless compassion for those people’s current and past trials and tribulations. It is by chance, by luck, by grace, that my people, my family, myself have escaped any true tragedy, e.g. war, disease, persecution. The wealth, peace, mindset, fortunes that then follow are equally a gift. There is no person on earth that deserves more than the other. 

As I settled into the middle part of the book, I realized that she articulately, sharply, insightfully describes many modern Western truths that we take for granted. It is not necessarily that they are all original ideas, but her presentation and the way the took my mind on a journey reminded me, touched me, and reassured me because I am myself and I am also the product of my external circumstances. How I view romantic love, what I wish of my family, what I expect of myself, the level of expectation I have from work satisfaction, none of this comes from myself and only myself. There is no pure fount. There is choice and self-autonomy, thanks be to God, and I can also forgive myself and free myself from the tyranny of abusive self-thought. 

Finally, she breathed hope into my world. I am loved, I love every day, and nobody has ever described better than bell hooks the action component of love. Let me be judged, and judge, by this standard. And may I be ever so blessed as to reread this book and find my next new lessons within it. Blessings to you, my dear bell hooks. 

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