All About Love

It's rare for a book to take such a strong stance against cynicsim without being dishonest or foolish. While I do feel some parts of this are hollow or under-examined, or have simply aged poorly (would hooks quote Marianne Williams today?), the bigger picture here is vital. A lot of my initial resistance to this book has less to do with the text and more to do with the imaginitive limits of the moral universe in which I spend most of my time. hooks pushes us to think beyond the dominating logics of capitalism and patriarchy without denying their power. Her way of framing patriarchy as emotional terrorism is compelling and fresh to me. And while I do not share all of her spiritual commitments I find them well-articulated here and even a little inspiring. A lot of modern readers don't want to swallow some of these truths, especially in what she says about hedonism and self-indulgence (which are distinct from the goods of ecstasy and pleasure and which really do stand in the way of love). hooks' consistent call to utopian thinking feels naive because we are trained to reject the prospect of real change out of hand, and I feel that is a mistake. It is worth taking hooks' alternative vision seriously.