Read Yes
Length 276
Quick Review Steinem is a feminist icon having dedicated her life to activism, which kept her on the road. She finally put pen to paper to document her journey.
This book was an adventure in and of itself because my dog took a bite out of the middle. After the ingestion of ten pages, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road.
As a woman who spends a great deal of time traveling, I enjoyed Steinem’s stories immensely because I identify with her narrative on so many levels. A lone woman on the road, wariness is a familiar companion. Steinem repeatedly found herself in uneasy scenarios only to be pleasantly surprised by the kindness and complexity of humanity. This has become one of my favorite parts of traveling.
Steinem’s nomadic life began with her father’s wandering ways. As a child without four walls to call her own, she lusted after a normal life only to realize the road was her normal. After college, she decided to go to India for two years where her love of traveling and being apart of the people began shaping her future. She talks about her stories with people, shared experiences, feeling of isolation, and how people would recross her path in the most unusual ways.
Steinem is known for her fierce activism for women’s rights, and one of the most powerful moments in the book is when she stated simply: “When humans are ranked instead of linked, everyone loses.” Her entire life on the road was for the purpose of leveling the playing field for all people regardless of gender, orientation, or ethnicity. As a traveler, she often dealt with feelings of isolation, which parallels the isolation many feminists deal with, “those of us, women and men, who identify with feminism are still made to feel isolated, wrong, out of step.” One of the most enlightening parts of My Life on the Road is when she discusses the Houston Women’s Convention in 1977. I never knew it existed, and she was there a leader and part of the movement.
A constant traveler herself, Steinem often found comrades in those who traveled for a living. She learned about the community cross-country truckers have, and the dangers and obstacles female drivers face. She learned of the struggle and marginalization of “stewardesses” in airlines as they fought for rights and equality to be known as flight attendants. Steinem could connect with people because she was always with people.
Steinem isn’t only serious, she’s incredibly funny with gems like: “It was like riding in a placenta with Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, or Chaka Khan.” She is funny, smart, and in touch. I can’t recommend it enough.
Memorable Quotes
“Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.”
“Also I’d, never thought about the racist reasons for controlling women’s bodies.”
“We might have known sooner that the most reliable predictor of whether a country is violent within itself – or will use military violence against another country – is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it’s violence against females. It normalizes all other violence.”
“Altogether, I can’t imagine technology replacing bookstores completely…”
“If you travel long enough, every story becomes a novel.”
“… the presence of any woman devalued the masculine domain.”
“the power to make people laugh is also a power, so women have been kept out of comedy.”
Title: My Life on the Road
Author: Gloria Steinem
Publisher: Random House (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9780679456209
