Gloria Steinem's My Life On The Road

“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel” (Steinem 10). My Life on the Road (2015), tells a story Gloria Steinem has never attempted to tell before, a narrative of a lifetime spend on the road. The book follows the experiences Steinem faced that allowed herself to grow as well as the world around her; this includes the growth of social movements of the 1960s and 1970s such as the women’s and civil rights movements. Gloria Steinem is a writer, political activist, and lecturer who has been an activist for women's rights since the late 1960s. In the 1960s, Steinem grew increasingly engaged in the women’s movement and in 1971, joined other feminists such as Betty Friedan to form

“My Father’s Footsteps” (chapter two) and “Talking Circles” (chapter three) are the only chronological stories in the book, starting from her early life to her receiving a fellowship to study in India. “My Father’s Footsteps ”, the second chapter, sets the stage for Steinem’s countless years of traveling on the road by telling the story of her childhood and most importantly, her father. Leo Steinem was traveling salesmen who continuously traveled on the road and never allowed himself, and his family to settle down for too long. “We never started out with enough money to reach our destination, not even close” (Steinem 21) Steinem states and that often caused them to have to sell china, silver, and other antiques to roadside antique dealers. It was in India that Steinem would come across women of all ages and sizes talking, nursing their youth, and sharing meals in which she would declare one of the most important discoveries of her life, the mobile community of talking circles. “[G]roups that gather with all five senses, and allow consciousness to change....They taught me to talk as well as listen. They also showed me that writing, which is solitary, is fine company for organizing, which is communal. It just took me a while to discover that both can happen wherever you are” (Steinem 48). As the book progresses, the stories told within stumble out of chronological order, but still progress the book in the direction of Steinem's traveling lifestyle