ALL ABOUT LOVE: New Visions

By Bell Hooks, (Amazon Books)

Reviewed by Lale Camyar

I was 9 years old when I started to think about love. The journey for love had begun… You might think it’s a big topic for a 9-year-old: no it wasn’t. The debate started with myself, with questions like what is love? Does it have a colour? A smell? Can you touch it? How do you feel? Does my teacher love me? What about my family? My mum? My father? Well the questions went on. I was not able to find the answers for each question but as time past and I grew older, I found answers about love; I mean every kind of love. I loved my friends, relatives, teachers, and neighbours – then there was the big boom! My first love. Well, this was different then the others; it was special. It was a very special feeling towards this person. The difference, this time was there was no third person involved – it was shared between just the two of us.

All About Love is a book everyone should read, if they have questioned love and come up with a conclusion. This book is a summary of your thoughts; of course there are parts, with which you’ll agree or disagree. And for those who didn’t read the book, as Bell Hooks says: "when I travelled around the nation giving lectures about ending racism and sexism, audiences, especially young listeners, became agitated when I speak about the place of love in any movement for social justice. Indeed, all the great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic".

As the title All about Love: New Visions indicates, we want to live in a culture where love can flourish. We yearn to end the lovelessness that is so pervasive in our society. This book tells us how to return to love.

All About Love: New Visions provides radical new ways to think about the art of loving; offering a hopeful, joyous vision of love’s transformative power. It lets us know what we must do to be touched by love’s grace.