Gloria Steinem's 'My Life on the Road' is a trip worth taking

“We have to behave as if everything we do matters, because sometimes it does.’’

So writes Gloria Steinem, the activist and feminist icon, in My Life on the Road. Her new book is a lyrical meditation on restlessness and the quest for equity that has taken her from the women-only rail cars of India to myriad university campuses where she has helped generations of women and men rally their collective voices.

Early on, the co-founder of Ms. magazine and champion of gender equality reveals that she is in many ways her father’s daughter. Steinem, now 81, recalls spending a good part of her childhood driving across the country with her parents and sister, as the family followed her father’s dreams of new opportunities looming just around the bend. They returned to an actual home only intermittently, and Steinem wonders whether her father’s defiance of convention to pursue his passions helped to shape the revolutionary she would become.

“Would I have dared to challenge rules later in life if my father had obeyed them?’’ she asks.

While there are elements of autobiography, My Life on the Road is less about her personal journey than it is about those Steinem has met along the way, and knowing that listening to others’ stories is as important as sharing your own.

There are the brushes with history. Steinem was close enough to hear gospel legend Mahalia Jackson urge Martin Luther King Jr. to tell the crowd about “the dream’’ during the 1963 March on Washington, spurring him to utter his most famous oratory. As a young journalist, Steinem received advice from Jack Newfield of The Village Voice on how to elicit the best quotes from then-U.S. Senate candidate Bobby Kennedy. And while on another journalistic assignment, she watched President John F. Kennedy walk toward the helicopter that would ferry him to Air Force One for that final, fateful flight to Dallas.

But more often Steinem focuses on the ordinary folks who so often do - or could - have a hand in history, but are unsung. Traversing the U.S. and the globe, Steinem has found oracles and sages at snow-covered bus stops, behind the wheel of taxi cabs, at coffeeshop counter tops, and in crowded college auditoriums.

She delivers the homily at the renowned St. Joan of Arc Catholic church in Minneapolis, piquing protests and possibly the ire of the Vatican. But years later, she meets a shy Hmong teenager inspired to find his voice after he reads about Steinem's courage to express hers, in that sanctuary.

Part of the appeal of My Life is how Steinem, with evocative, melodic prose, conveys the air of discovery and wonder she felt during so many of her journeys.

And Steinem poignantly admits to frailties that many readers might find surprising. The outspoken feminist was initially terrified of speaking in public. The rule-breaking activist, often cried, instead of crying out, when she became angry. She never spoke up when Gay Talese dismissed her as just a “pretty girl’’ pretending to be a writer, nor did she respond to frequent attacks by Feminine Mystique author Betty Friedan, who, Steinem says, once painfully refused to shake Steinem’s mother’s hand.

Whatever one’s politics, such candor draws you in. And as the country continues to struggle with painful questions about race relations, reproductive rights and the plight of immigrants, the lessons imparted in Life on the Road offer more than a reminiscence. They are a beacon of hope for the future.

My Life on the Road

By Gloria Steinem

Random House

3.5 stars out of four

Follow USA TODAY reporter Charisse Jones on twitter @charissejones