“We need one another.”

In a book packed with advice, candor and stories, this sentence from the preface echoes throughout Gloria Steinem’s last book and echoed throughout her life. AN UNEXPECTED LIFE follows a young Midwesterner’s growth from a curious reader to a feminist force to be reckoned with. At the core of everything she experienced, stood for and wrote about was the notion of sameness despite differences. She writes of our shared connections, our interwoven beginnings and our inherited memory as evidence that we are all linked “passengers on Spaceship Earth.” 

Early passages share snippets about Steinem’s parents and grandparents, including a paternal grandmother who gave educational talks and a mother who was a journalist for the Toledo Blade. They were working women in an era when women were expected to marry and raise children. Growing up on the road, performing as a magician’s assistant and in beauty contests, Steinem’s teachers (the few she had) became voices of “connectedness,” who taught her about Europe and Asia, expanding her worldview from a very young age. “In retrospect,” she writes, “I was lucky, since in childhood, we are such sponges for everything around us.”

"I started reading this book before Steinem passed away. What started as a delicious dive into her latest essays instead became a private reverie --- a celebration of who she was, how she ignited feminism, and how, ultimately, she changed the world. I hope others will read it in the same way."

Steinem attended Smith College and knew from an early age that the conventional path was not to be hers. After earning her degree, she broke off a doomed engagement and went to India on a fellowship to study grassroots efforts. She came back to the US and started a career as a freelance writer in New York. 

In 1963, Steinem wrote a groundbreaking exposé on the Playboy Club after going undercover as a bunny. The story legitimized her as a journalist and catapulted her into the national and international conversation about women’s rights and treatment. She began to recognize the strategic use of good storytelling to impact public opinion, even at the cost of personal scrutiny in the limelight.

Almost 10 years later, Steinem co-founded Ms., the first American feminist magazine, whose target audience was women who were concerned about more than just domestic issues. She also was responsible for launching several organizations, including Women’s Media Center, Voters for Choice, and the National Women’s Political Caucus. In describing them, Steinem emphasizes the necessity of persistence, flexibility and collaboration. She never offers a step-by-step guide on how to start your own movement, but she recommends piloting ideas and working strategically with media. 

Perhaps some of the best parts of AN UNEXPECTED LIFE lies in Steinem’s retelling of her encounters with other figures with whom she crossed paths in her life. They include:

• Bella Abzug, who Steinem describes as “a community” herself. A New Yorker, Bella drew a crowd of men and women wherever she went. She was one of the first women for whom Steinem campaigned.
   
• Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Wilma taught Steinem that in the Cherokee culture, the “spirit of laughter embodies the essence of freedom.” Laughter is neither male nor female. It is universal.
   
• Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, a colleague of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the nation’s handicraft movement. When asked about Gandhi, Kamaladevi responded, “Well, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.”
   
• James Earl Jones, the actor. He said to Steinem, “Any minority is a female to the majority, and you got to fight your way out.”
   
• Clay Felker, Steinem's editor at Esquire. After she researched and drafted an article on contraception, Clay famously said to her, “You’ve performed the impossible feat of making sex dull,” and suggested she rewrite the piece to make it less medical.

“Each of us can learn from the people in our lives, whether it’s the local mail carrier who turns out to be a grassroots organizer or the heroic woman on the cover of a newspaper who has exposed corruption,” Steinem writes. “We never know what might come from our chance encounters when we keep our minds and hearts open.”

Steinem’s musings on our connectedness are reminders of why she fought for the rights of women and others throughout her life. She points out that 95% of the time that humans have lived on earth did not involve racism or patriarchy or conquest of nature, but rather a community that honored each person’s uniqueness. She speculates on our yearning for this now as nostalgia for what had been very real in the past. And she states that while we cannot return to the past, by “understanding its breadth, we may be inspired to create a better future.”

AN UNEXPECTED LIFE is a retrospective with hope for the future. In everything she writes, and despite disappointment with the current pervasive nationalism, Steinem holds out optimism because we are all in this together: “Whether we are related by blood or by ideas, whether we live in harmony or have been divided by species, war, religion, race or class, we are all passengers on Spaceship Earth.”

I started reading this book before Steinem passed away. What started as a delicious dive into her latest essays instead became a private reverie --- a celebration of who she was, how she ignited feminism, and how, ultimately, she changed the world. I hope others will read it in the same way.