My Life on the Road: Prelude–Part I

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. aberration
    a state or condition markedly different from the norm
    While walking in Rapid City, I hear a biker say to his tattooed woman partner, “Honey, shop as long as you want—I’ll meet you at the cappuccino place.” I assume this is an aberration.
  2. itinerant
    traveling from place to place to work
    I wasn’t on a Kerouac road trip, or rebelling before settling down, or even traveling for one cause. At first I was a journalist following stories, then a sometime worker in political campaigns and movements, and most consistently an itinerant feminist organizer.
  3. aversion
    the act of turning yourself or your gaze away
    Take public speaking: I spent all of my twenties and early thirties avoiding it. When I once asked a speech teacher about my aversion, she explained that dancers and writers were especially difficult to teach to speak in public, since both had chosen a profession in which they didn’t have to talk—and I had been both.
  4. breadth
    the extent of something from side to side
    I’m also now immune to politicians who say, “I’ve traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know…” I’ve traveled more than any of them, and I don’t know.
  5. backlash
    an adverse reaction to some political or social occurrence
    It may just be their fear and guilt talking: What if I am treated as I have treated others? But with all the power and money that is behind it, this backlash could imprison us in a hierarchy all over again.
  6. outstrip
    be or do something to a greater degree
    One is that Americans seem to outstrip every nation for hope.
  7. serendipity
    good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries
    I remember such serendipity as waiting out a storm in a roadhouse that just happened to have a jukebox and a stranded tango teacher who explained the street history of this dance...
  8. implore
    beg or request earnestly and urgently
    As Zapata rides to his destiny, his wife hangs on to his boot, dragging in the dust, imploring him to stay home.
  9. unscrupulous
    without principles
    Even the dictionary defines adventurer as “a person who has, enjoys, or seeks adventures,” but adventuress is “a woman who uses unscrupulous means in order to gain wealth or social position.”
  10. rambling
    winding or meandering
    As novelist Margaret Atwood wrote to explain women’s absence from quest-for-identity novels, “there’s probably a simple reason for this: send a woman out alone on a rambling nocturnal quest and she’s likely to end up a lot deader a lot sooner than a man would.”
  11. matriarchal
    having a woman or women as the head or ruler
    In matrilocal cultures, men joined their wives’ families—in about a third of the world they still do—but with equal status, since those cultures are and almost never were matriarchal.
  12. correspondent
    someone who communicates by means of letters
    This correspondence was so precious to them that some women were buried with their letters of friendship, yet enough survive for us to see that they wrote in a slender column down the center of each page, leaving wide margins as spaces for a correspondent to add her own words.
  13. precarious
    not secure; beset with difficulties
    But as soon as Labor Day had ended this precarious livelihood, my father moved his office into his car.
  14. appraise
    estimate the nature, quality, ability or significance of
    After my mother, with her better eye for antiques and her reference books, appraised them for sale, we got into the car again to sell them to roadside antique dealers anywhere within a day’s journey.
  15. whim
    a sudden desire
    Then one day, as if struck by a sudden whim rather than a lifelong wanderlust, he announced that it was time to put the family dog and other essentials into the house trailer that was always parked in our yard, and begin our long trek to Florida or California.
  16. sybaritic
    displaying luxury and furnishing gratification to the senses
    Since this required the chopping of wood, an insult to my father’s sybaritic soul, he had invented a wood-burning system all his own: he stuck one end of a long log into the fire and let the other protrude into the living room, then kicked it into the fireplace until the whole thing turned to ash.
  17. disdain
    lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike
    If a shop owner treated us with too much disdain, my father was not above letting him think we really were selling our possessions.
  18. primer
    an introductory textbook
    Indeed, it was road signs that taught me to read in the first place—perfect primers, when you think about it. COFFEE came with a steaming cup, HOT DOGS and HAMBURGERS had illustrations, a bed symbolized HOTEL, and graphics warned of BRIDGE or ROAD WORK.
  19. monotony
    the quality of wearisome constancy and lack of variety
    I remember my father driving on desert roads made of wired-together planks, with only an occasional rattlesnake ranch or one-pump gas station to break the monotony.
  20. deference
    courteous regard for people's feelings
    Ever challenged by rules, my father took us down the road to a slack place in the fence, and sneaked us onto the set. Perhaps assuming that we had permission from higher-ups, the crew treated us with deference.
  21. flush
    having an abundant supply of money or possessions of value
    Whenever we were flush, we traded the cold concrete showers of trailer parks for taking turns at a hot bath in a motel.
  22. warren
    a complex system of paths or tunnels
    Afterward, we often went to some local movie palace, a grand and balconied place that was nothing like the warrens of viewing rooms today.
  23. causeway
    a road that is raised above water, marshland, or sand
    On a California highway overlooking the Pacific or a Florida causeway that cut through the Gulf of Mexico like Moses parting the Red Sea, we would get out of our cramped car, stretch, and fill our lungs in an ontogeny of birth.
  24. conventional
    conforming with accepted standards
    Another truth of my early wanderings is harder to admit: I longed for a home. It wasn’t a specific place but a mythical neat house with conventional parents, a school I could walk to, and friends who lived nearby.
  25. tacit
    implied by or inferred from actions or statements
    By tacit agreement, we tended to meet on street corners.
  26. mantra
    a commonly repeated word or phrase
    In city streets, I often looked into lighted windows and repeated the mantra of my childhood: Everybody has a home but me.
  27. subsidize
    support, as through grants or other funds
    He would meet me when my boat docked in San Francisco, and sell the stone for a profit that would subsidize our drive back east in style.
  28. steerage
    the cheapest accommodations on a passenger ship
    When I emerged along with three hundred Chinese immigrants from steerage—the cheapest way home—he met me with his jeweler’s loupe.
  29. condescending
    characteristic of those who treat others with arrogance
    He was sure that if I wore, say, a ring and a pin or a bracelet when we went into a jewelry store, the store owners would assume they were making a killing at the expense of a down-on-our-luck father and daughter. It was the same technique he had used on condescending antique dealers in my childhood.
  30. plight
    a situation from which extrication is difficult
    Only then did I realize that we really were a down-on-our-luck father and daughter. He had turned our plight into a game we could win.
  31. pinion
    restrain or bind
    My father’s car was sideswiped with such force that the driver’s door was staved in, he was pinioned beneath the steering wheel, and the car was spun into the oncoming traffic.
  32. marquee
    a structure, often with a signboard, over an entrance
    Instead of checking newspaper listings, he got in his car and drove around to look at every theater marquee within miles.
  33. rendition
    a performance of a musical composition or a dramatic role
    He could only have remembered me as a child with my head in a book, refusing to sing along with his cheerful renditions of World War I songs, asking him to drive slowly past pretty houses and wishing aloud that we lived there.
  34. connoisseur
    an expert able to appreciate a field
    As a connoisseur of extra-thick malteds, he knew all the best roadside sources from coast to coast.
  35. haphazard
    marked by great carelessness
    We were eating in our usual haphazard way in the living room—never on the debris-covered dining room table that was used only on national holidays—and he asked me if I wanted dessert.
  36. solicitude
    a feeling of excessive concern
    I’ve always remembered your father’s solicitude in helping two homeless and broke West Virginia boys that summer.
  37. ostensibly
    from appearances alone
    Saturdays I would ostensibly go to work. I would put pills in pillboxes and label them or develop X-rays. Sometimes I got to assist during minor surgeries.
  38. furtively
    in a secretive manner
    When he told me to sit down, he always patted the couch next to him, looking furtively around the room. What was going to happen next was not for just anyone to see. He would start searching around in his suitcoat pockets, eventually coming out with gems.
  39. profusely
    in very large amounts or quantities; extremely
    He was breathing heavily, obviously working hard, and sweating profusely.
  40. quixotic
    not sensible about practical matters
    Of course, his quixotic nature played a role, as did his optimism and his gift for excess, yet I doubt he would have chosen such a risky life if he hadn’t been fleeing an orderly one.
Created on 十二月 20, 2023 (updated 十二月 21, 2023)

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