Book 1 Post 2

The Book That Built Me Up and Broke Me Down

Much to my surprise, I enjoyed reading Gloria Steinem’s memoir. I say it’s a surprise because I’ve never been someone who reads for leisure. I typically have to force myself to read books for classes about three days before whatever deliverable to prove I read the book is due––and while I did read this at a slower pace than I had anticipated––this book was so relatable and engaging I actually wanted to read it. I imagine if I had to read a memoir by a person whose life wasn’t relatable to me or monumentally important I would’ve fallen into my old habits. My Life On the Road was also the first memoir I’ve ever read and I’m glad I chose it. There were two particular pieces of the book I felt most connected to: what she learned about Gandhi on her second trip to India and her memories of her father.

Most of what I took from Steinem’s writing was personal and emotional, but one of the more interesting historical takeaways I got was the relationship between the feminist movement and Gandhi's movement for Indian independence. She wrote that her friend Devaki Jain, who she met when she first went to India, introduced her to Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, one of the few women leaders during the independence movement. Steinem and Jain thought they came up with the original idea of using Gandhian techniques (nonviolent resistance) for the women’s movement. When they told Chattopadhyay this she said something akin to “Where do you think he got it from?” I had no idea that the roots of nonviolent resistance came from poor women, yet at the same time I’m not remotely surprised. It was inspiring to learn about the women behind the man leading the movement. It made me curious about all of the other times this has happened in history that we don’t know about, where a woman was the mind behind the face of a man.

I could probably write pages about the similarities I see between my father and Steinem’s father, but that wouldn’t be very interesting. Instead I’ll illustrate the connection I felt to her recollections about his life. I’m a very emotional person: once I cried because I was out of parmesan cheese when I had already made pasta. So while it’s normal for me to be very easily affected by things, I have never been emotionally affected by a book. When I read about her father dying alone in the hospital before she arrived, I broke down in tears. In that moment I felt so grateful for everything my dad did to raise me as an ass-kicking, empowered woman and tried as hard as I could not to think about losing him. Strong-willed feminists, in my opinion, come from one of two upbringings: one with a supportive father who raised his daughter without a care in the world for what society thinks women should be, or one without a father whose absence illuminated the strength of a woman independent from a man. Steinem and myself are fortunate enough to be a product of the former.