Gloria Steinem on what older people can teach America
September 4, 2026
Gloria Steinem died yesterday. The following is an adaptation from her forthcoming memoir, An Unexpected Life.
My father had two points of pride: He never wore a hat, as men of his generation were supposed to do, and he never had a job, by which he meant he worked for himself. In the summertime, he ran a dance pavilion in rural Michigan with the slogan “Dancing over the water and under the stars.” When the weather grew too cold for this outdoor enterprise, he hitched our house trailer to the car and my parents, my older sister, the family dog, and I headed toward the warmth of Florida or California.
We never started off with enough money to make the trip, which meant my father also packed boxes of antique china, silverware, and jewelry that he had purchased at local family auctions, which he sold to roadside shops along the way. We proceeded slowly from one trailer park to the next, until we arrived at some southern shore. There, my father hooked our trailer to the water and electricity of a rented spot overlooking the ocean, and my sister joined a local public school. I, however, was considered too young to bother enrolling, which meant that my education was haphazard.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/everything-we-do-matters/688514/
