On Wednesday January 26th, we will discuss bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions (wikipedia link). This is an online event, which will be held via videocall. Anyone is welcome, but we keep link details private – please contact us for the Zoom details.

bell hooks was an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. She died on December 15th 2021, and we will discuss her work to mark her passing. bell hooks published more than 30 books and many scholarly articles, and taught at Stanford and Yale universities. Her work explored race, capitalism, and gender, and the ways in which systems of oppression and class domination are perpetuated. All About Love was published in the year 2000. Through personal anecdotes and discussion of psychological and philosophical ideas, hooks argues that our culture has lost the true meaning of love, and believes it is because we have no shared definition.

Stroud Radical Reading Group events are free to attend. You are welcome to attend to listen to the discussion even if you do not have time to engage with any of the content. Free resources are listed below, but if you can, please buy a copy of the book from the Yellow Lighted Bookshop using the following link (adding the “StroudRadical” Coupon Code will get you 10% off the standard price). Order a copy of All About Love.

We will focus our discussion on the opening chapters of the book (Preface, Introduction, Chapter 1 – Clarity: Give Love Words, and Chapter 2 – Justice: Childhood Love Lessons). Download a pdf version of these chapters for free below. We encourage people to read more of the book if possible (you can also read the full text of the book free as a pdf). If you prefer audio/visual content to reading, you may prefer to listen to a 10 minute interview where bell books discusses the book, or watch/listen to a 70 minute video of bell hooks speaking about love at a library in Harlem from the year 2000 (full captions are provided).

“A visionary and accessible book, bell hooks’s All About Love offers radical new ways to think about love. Here, hooks, one of our most acute social critics, takes the themes that put her on the map – the relationship between love and sexuality, and the interconnectedness between the public and the private – and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is more important than all other bonds.”

“All About Love is a blueprint for finding myriad types of love, which hold the redemptive power to change our minds and lives.” – Publisher jacket text