All About Love • Syllabus
DISCUSSION SCHEDULE / WEDNESDAYS, 6 - 7:30pm PST
11/10: Intro - CH 2 (pgs intro - 30)
11/17: CH 3 - 5 (pgs 31-84)
11/24: NO MEETING
12/1: CH 6 - 8 (pgs 85-144)
12/8: CH 9 - 11 (pgs 145-206)
12/15: CH 12 - 13 (pgs 207 - end)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952, in the Appalachian region of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, bell hooks wrote that her black feminist awakenings began at home where she grounded herself in “…the way of knowing I had learned from unschooled southern black folks.” hooks’ pseudonym honors the legacy of mother and grandmother; she chose a lower case spelling to shift focus away from her identity and towards the substance of her writing.
bell hooks is a cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of our nation’s leading public intellectuals by The Atlantic Monthly, as well as one of Utne Reader’s “100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life,” she is a charismatic speaker who divides her time among teaching, writing and lecturing around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is the author of more than 17 books. She started her literary career while receiving her formal education–graduating with a B.A. from Stanford, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and finally receiving her Ph.D. from the University of California-Santa Cruz.
Starting with Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, published in 1981, hooks’ work has been a steady cornerstone in the black feminist canon. Firmly rooted in the black feminist principle of developing theory from wisdom and experience, hooks’ work on race, class, and gender is rooted in analyses of deeply personal moments from her own life and the life of black women around her.
ABOUT THE BOOK
All About Love: New Visions is a book by bell hooks published in 2000 that discusses aspects of love in modern society. hooks combines personal anecdotes as well as psychological and philosophical ideas to develop and strengthen her argument. In 13 concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for emotional connection and society's failure to provide a model for learning to love. Each chapter discusses an aspect of love ( affection, respect, recognition, commitment, trust, care, and open and honest communication). First, she explains her position and introduces an external work which is primarily about that aspect of love. Then she provides suggestions on how to reverse our cultural training and become more open to giving and receiving love. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for the individuals and for a nation.
READING TIPS FOR FRESH READERS
1. Set aside 15-20 mins a day to read: Much like power nap — a power read — can energize your reading and help you focus.
2. Everyone reads and digests at a different pace. Take your time in understanding the text without needing to dissect it immediately.
3. Take notes: a) Highlight terms, phrases, quotes etc that may immediately grab your attention.
4. Build a personal glossary: If you don’t know a word, circle it, get the definition and reread the section in context. Feel free to share with the group during discussions.
5. Discuss the book: That’s what the #WELIT Book Club is for! Wednesdays, 6pm PST, starting 11/10/21.
TIPS FOR RETURNING READERS
1. Put the book in context: Times have changed and so have you. Before re-reading, think about who you were, and where you were in life the first time you read the book. Think about who was influencing you/your thoughts. (School, friends, family, news, etc.)
2. Be Critical: First reads are a time to be open-minded and give the author a lead way to understand their thoughts. Upon second reads, you can be much more critical of the work and its intentions. So get on ya soapbox and share during discussion.
OVERVIEW
Discourse Objective Specific to the Book: hooks’ theoretical work focuses largely on the practices of Black feminism. Consistent in all of hooks’ writing is the notion that “Embedded in the commitment to feminist revolution is the challenge to love.” Centralizing the role of love in revolutionary politics, hooks often writes about means of rescuing love from hegemonic forces, preserving its usefulness as a central component of our liberatory politics. Furthermore, hooks understood love not only as the ethic that ought to ground the revolution against gendered and racial oppression but also as the personal and communal source that would sustain Black communities through that struggle. Placing the emphasis on personal and political potential, All About Love offers a guide to self-recovery and a life of love that has challenging implications not only on a reader’s intimate life but also their most important political choices.
MOTIFS
Love, patriarchy, gender roles, abuse, child-rearing, childhood trauma, black feminism, self-recovery, liberation, collective conscious raising, self-actualization
GLOSSARY
Love: the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth; an act of will, namely both an intention and an action (4-5; from The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck).
Cathexis: investing feeling or emotion in someone we are deeply drawn to; the process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us. hooks argues we often confuse cathecting with loving, which allows us to accept hurt and neglect in our concepts of “love” (5-6).
Spirituality: the dimension of our core reality where mind, body, and spirit are one; an animated principle of the self—a life force—that when nurtured enhances our capacity to be more fully self-actualized and be able to engage in communion with the worlds around us. This dimension need not be connected to a religious idea (13).
Transcendence: existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level; self-transcendence is defined as overcoming the limits of the individual self and its desires in spiritual contemplation and realization. Hooks understand self transcendence as the ability to love beyond the individual and adopt an ethic that centers the needs of the commons.
