June Not Fiction Book Discussions

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem gives readers insight into how one of the iconic writers, lecturers, editors, and feminist activists of the twentieth century grew into her calling. It is also a call to readers to become agents of change in their own communities.

In a warm, anecdotal style, Steinem, now in her 80s, shares the experiences that led her to become an organizer. After more than four decades of work, she is still optimistic about people's ability to create meaningful change in their communities through listening and collaborating on shared solutions to problems. The essential feature of her life has been travel, and the road becomes a metaphor for the state of mind she wants to encourage her readers to adopt as well:

Taking to the road--by which I mean letting the road take you--changed who I thought I was. The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories--in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.

While there are elements of autobiography in My Life on the Road, especially Steinem's stories about her itinerant childhood with her parents, this book concentrates on her career as an organizer and the professional lessons she has learned from it rather than her work as a writer and editor or the impact of her work on her life. What do you think of Steinem's focus? Did you enjoy learning about this particular aspect of her career? Was there more that you wanted to know about her life? What kind of person does she seem to be? And how did you like the anecdotal organization of her book? Did you find it conversational or a little disjointed? Have you ever participated in community organizing? How did your experience compare with Steinem's? Do you share her essential hopefulness?

Steinem has always found independent bookstores to be a resource for communal activism. In the spirit of "hand selling" books, she now keeps an occasional blog in which she recommends titles she has found inspiring and encourages readers to do the same. Visit it here and join the discussion.

We hope you will join our discussion, too: Tuesday, June 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, June 16, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.