A long and winding road
At the age of 81, it’s hard to imagine that there’s much left to learn about Gloria Steinem. The feminist icon has been famous since the 1960s, delivering speeches, giving interviews and writing countless books and articles. But My Life on the Roadexplores a subject that she’s has never delved into before: travel. Steinem’s work as a journalist and community organizer has had her criss-crossing the United States for five decades now, and she’s become something of a modern-day nomad.
This memoir begins with a look at the two figures that sparked Steinem’s enduring wanderlust: her father, a charismatic wanderer, and her mother, a depressed homebody who was terrified of the wider world. From one, she inherited restlessness; from the other, a determination to overcome fear.
The resulting life is far from conventional, and is defined by the freedom of constant movement and of crossing cultural, racial and class boundaries. We find the women’s rights leader in all kinds of unexpected situations: taking impromptu midnight tours of truck stops with long-haul drivers, chatting with Ms. magazine-reading bikers over breakfast in South Dakota and dancing at Native American powwows.
She may be a fixture on the pages of magazines such as Vanity Fair, but she’s just as at home in a Greyhound station, diner or hotel workers’ rally as she is at a Manhattan cocktail party.
Moreover, there’s an almost mystical quality to the way Steinem writes about travel, and it will be familiar to anyone who has glimpsed the magic and spontaneity that happen on the road. The writing is alive, full of joy and wonder.
Where the book falls down is when it veers off into Steinem’s political life. Next to sparkling anecdotes from her many journeys, the minutiae of founding a national women’s organization or campaigning for candidates or saving Ms. from folding can feel a bit tedious.
The true strength of the book is not in documenting social change, but in providing a living, breathing alternative model — a way to envision a woman’s life that revolves around the exhilaration of adventure. To that end, My Life on the Road is invaluable. Tara Henley is a writer and journalist.