“We’ve always been told that love should just feel good. It should be fluffy and light and easy. And that means you’re looking at the media version of love,” she said.
Published by William Morrow and Company in 2000, “All About Love” endures as a word-of-mouth favorite — the kind of book that continues to be read and discussed even without any breaking news event, movie tie-in or publicity campaign. Friends recommend it to friends. Fans post about it on Instagram and TikTok and review it on Goodreads, where more than 190,000 members have included it on their to-read list.
According to Circana, which tracks around 85% of physical book sales, “All About Love” sold more than 170,000 copies in 2023, compared to just over 27,000 in 2018. Morrow editor Rachel Kahan cites the murder of George Floyd in 2020 as a turning point, although sales were already rising.
“I think this is one of those situations where the book’s been around a while and the culture rises up to meet it,” says Kahan, who was working with hooks at the time of her death, in December 2021. A few months before, Kahan had told the author that “All About Love” made The New York Times bestseller list.
“We were kind of laughing and crying,” the editor said. “She was so excited that the book was getting all this attention from readers and influencing the conversation.”
Scholars of hooks welcome the late feminist’s ongoing popularity, but some worry that readers are gaining only a selective understanding of her, viewing her more as a self-help author than as a political and social thinker.
The pen name for Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks helped popularize the idea of “intersectionality,” a concept coined by Black civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw, also known for her work on the concept of critical race theory. Intersectionality holds that racism, sexism and economic inequality reinforce each other and shape (and distort) the ways we see ourselves, and…
Read the full article here
