My Life on the Road: Part II

by Gloria Steinem
In this memoir, the author and co-founder of Ms. Magazine and the National Women's Political Caucus, traces how her travels, starting in Ohio as a child moving around trailer parks and including years abroad in Europe and India, have inspired her lifelong activism.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Prelude–Part I, Part II, Parts III–IV, Parts V–VI, Part VII–Afterword
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. festoon
    decorate or adorn
    I couldn’t imagine any other way of navigating streets jammed with slow oxcarts, fast motorcycles, yellow and black taxis that looked like bumblebees, swarms of bicyclists, a wandering cow or two, ancient buses stuffed with passengers inside and festooned with freeloaders outside, and peddlers who darted up to sell food and trinkets at every stop.
  2. staggering
    so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm
    I wouldn’t hear political arguments in the Indian English that bridges fourteen languages, or witness the staggering variety of newspapers that Indians read.
  3. legacy
    anything handed down by someone or something in the past
    My student friends urged me to take one of the women-only railway cars that were still a feature of trains crisscrossing the subcontinent as a legacy of the British.
  4. gesticulate
    show, express, or direct through movement
    As a foreigner in a sari, I soon inspired curiosity, kindness, and a lot of advice, all in our few shared English and Hindi words, plus a lot of gesticulating.
  5. nuance
    a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude
    In between stops, they offered me their own curries, rice, and homemade breads, taught me more ways to tie a sari than I had imagined possible—including one for playing tennis—and discussed varieties of mangoes with all the nuance that Westerners reserve for wines.
  6. reticent
    not inclined to talk or provide information
    I soon learned there was a very Indian habit of asking personal questions. It must have driven the reticent English crazy.
  7. caste
    a hereditary social class among Hindus
    An elderly man explained that caste riots had broken out in nearby Ramnad, a large rural area of the southeast, and government leaders in far-off New Delhi had ordered the area cordoned off in the hope of containing the burnings and killings.
  8. consensus
    agreement in the judgment reached by a group as a whole
    It was the first time I witnessed the ancient and modern magic of groups in which anyone may speak in turn, everyone must listen, and consensus is more important than time.
  9. immolation
    killing or offering as a sacrifice
    In India under the British, Gandhi had witnessed a massive women’s movement organizing against suttee, the immolation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres, and much more.
  10. barrister
    a British lawyer who speaks in the higher courts of law
    In England as a young man studying to be a barrister, Gandhi also saw the suffrage movement, and he later urged activists working for self-rule in India to emulate the courage and tactics of the Pankhursts, England’s most famous and radical suffragists.
  11. emulate
    strive to equal or match, especially by imitating
    In England as a young man studying to be a barrister, Gandhi also saw the suffrage movement, and he later urged activists working for self-rule in India to emulate the courage and tactics of the Pankhursts, England’s most famous and radical suffragists.
  12. collusion
    secret agreement
    I read that Martin Luther King, Jr., was leading a March on Washington, a massive campaign for jobs, justice, new legislation, and federal protection for civil rights marchers who were being beaten, jailed, and sometimes murdered in the South, all with police collusion.
  13. perpetuate
    cause to continue or prevail
    But only Mrs. Greene made me understand the parallels between race and caste—and how women’s bodies were used to perpetuate both. Different prisons. Same key.
  14. litany
    a prayer consisting of a series of invocations by the priest with responses from the congregation
    And he did begin the “I have a dream” litany from memory, with the crowd calling out to him after each image—Tell it!
  15. self-possessed
    calm, composed, and fully in control of oneself
    I knew the oldest of his six daughters, Attallah Shabazz, an elegant and experienced version of those self-possessed young women.
  16. mystique
    an aura of heightened interest surrounding a person or thing
    A few years earlier in the 1960s, women a decade or so older than I had begun to reject the “feminine mystique” of the suburbs, as brilliantly and lethally described by Betty Friedan in her best seller, and to demand women’s rightful place in the paid workforce.
  17. fractious
    stubbornly resistant to authority or control
    Though the starting places of these various activist groups had been very different and had created pain and misunderstanding, by the end of the 1970s they came together as fractious, idealistic, diverse, and effective parts of the same movement.
  18. secular
    not concerned with or devoted to religion
    Nonetheless, the idea of equality was so contagious that the right wing would soon rate feminism as a danger right up there with secular humanism and godless Communism.
  19. belie
    be in contradiction with
    In 1971 The St. Petersburg Times headlined, “Gloria’s Beauty Belies Her Purpose.”
  20. subtext
    a meaning that is not expressly stated but can be inferred
    The subtext was: If you could get a man, why would you need equal pay?
  21. corollary
    something that follows or accompanies naturally
    This grew into an accusation that I was listened to only because of how I looked, and a corollary that the media had created me.
  22. chutzpah
    unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity
    I couldn’t think of anyone but Bella who could dream up such a massive series of events, much less have the chutzpah to ask Congress to pay for them.
  23. contentious
    involving or likely to cause controversy
    Women in every state and territory would be invited to debate and decide such contentious issues as reproductive freedom and abortion, welfare rights, lesbian rights, domestic violence, and the exclusion of domestic workers from labor laws.
  24. appropriation
    money set aside for a specific purpose, as by a legislature
    Her request for $10 million was actually a bargain at twenty-eight cents per adult American woman, but Congress went into shock. It delayed voting until a year after the first state conference was supposed to start; then it slashed the appropriation in half to $5 million.
  25. undertaking
    any piece of work that is attempted
    To organize this mammoth undertaking, President Jimmy Carter appointed a new group of IWY commissioners.
  26. commission
    a special group delegated to consider some matter
    I was one, which is why I and about three dozen other members of this new commission ended up spending two years crisscrossing the country to help organize fifty-six conferences of two days each.
  27. slog
    walk heavily and firmly, as when weary, or through mud
    In Vermont, more than a thousand women slogged through ice and snow to create the biggest women’s conference ever seen there.
  28. excommunicate
    expel from a church or a religious community
    Though over 60 percent of Americans supported it, one Mormon woman was about to be excommunicated for campaigning for the ERA.
  29. actuarial
    relating to statistics to calculate insurance premiums
    Some said this opposition came from a fear that the ERA would take women out of a traditional role by offering them equality outside the home; others pointed out that Mormon-owned insurance companies would lose money if gender-rated actuarial tables were outlawed, as race-rated ones had been.
  30. disclose
    make known to the public information previously kept secret
    On the theory that exposure cures many ills, Bella called a press conference to disclose this attempt to overrepresent one religious group.
  31. suffrage
    a legal right to vote
    There were First Ladies, Girl Scout Color Guards, and even relay runners: women athletes who set out from Seneca Falls, New York, where the fight for suffrage began, carrying a lighted torch all the way.
  32. rhetoric
    using language effectively to please or persuade
    Groups of observers holding signs from Mexico, India, and Japan cheered for a speech by Barbara Jordan, the African American congresswoman from Texas, as, in her elegant rhetoric, she called for “a domestic human rights program.”
  33. fervent
    characterized by intense emotion
    With twenty-six multi-issue planks that had emerged from the states on subjects from child care to foreign policy, there was both fervent debate and an undercurrent of worry about the time it would take to debate them all.
  34. undercurrent
    a feeling or tendency that is not explicitly expressed
    With twenty-six multi-issue planks that had emerged from the states on subjects from child care to foreign policy, there was both fervent debate and an undercurrent of worry about the time it would take to debate them all.
  35. arcane
    requiring secret or mysterious knowledge
    I listened to disputes over arcane points of order, and also to heartfelt speeches, demonstrations that interrupted everything, and much caucusing on the floor.
  36. prevail
    be larger in number, quantity, power, status or importance
    I couldn’t believe that, somehow, process and a sense of humor were prevailing.
  37. caucus
    a closed political meeting
    My surprise duty at the conference was a last-minute request from the various women-of-color caucuses to be a kind of scribe.
  38. acclamation
    enthusiastic approval or recognition
    With chants, applause, and tears, the two thousand delegates accepted the new so-called Minority Plank by acclamation.
  39. facilitate
    be of use
    I was as proud of my facilitating role as anything I had ever done in my life.
  40. chasm
    an unbridgeable gap, break, or disagreement
    Before Houston, I had known that women in small groups could be courageous and loyal to each other and respect each other’s differences.
    After Houston, I’d learned that women could do this in large numbers, across chasms of difference, and for serious purpose.
Created on Wed Dec 20 16:06:28 EST 2023 (updated Thu Dec 21 13:02:18 EST 2023)

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