All About Love: New Perspectives (Love Trilogy Book 1)

What is love, after all? Is this such a subjective, opaque question? According to bell hooks, when we pulverize its meaning, we become even further from understanding it. In this book, the first volume of her Love Trilogy, the author seeks to elucidate what love truly is, whether in familial, romantic, and friendship relationships or in religious experiences. Contrary to the prevailing thought, which often sees love as a sign of weakness and irrationality, bell hooks argues that love is more than a feeling — it is an action capable of transforming the nihilism, greed, and obsession with power that dominate our culture. It is through the construction of a loving ethics that we will be able to build a truly egalitarian society, grounded in justice and commitment to collective well-being.

In a society that sees talking about love as naïve, the proposal presented by bell hooks when writing about the subject is courageous and challenging. And the challenge is to place love at the center of life. By stating that she began to think and write about love when she found "cynicism instead of hope in the voices of young and old people," and that cynicism is the greatest barrier that can exist in the face of love because it intensifies our doubts and paralyzes us, bell hooks supports the transformative practice of love, which sends away fear and frees our souls. Thus, she calls us to return to love. If lovelessness is the order of the day in the contemporary world, speaking of love can be revolutionary.

— Silvane Silva, in the Preface to the Brazilian edition

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