Gloria Steinem Came to New York to Be a Writer. She Became a Movement.
New York Times · LC · trust 17/100
Her 1983 book “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions” is a master class in grit, empathy, curiosity and hustle.
Share full article 25 Gloria Steinem in her Upper East Side home in 2011. Credit... Jason Schmidt/Trunk Archive By Veronica Chambers
Over the course of her career she published 11 books, from the little known “ Beach Book ” to her 1983 collection of essays, “ Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions ,” to the forthcoming memoir “An Unexpected Life,” which will be released on Sept. 22. It’s easy to shelve those books alongside celebrity memoirs and missives largely because somewhere between that cab ride and when she helped revive New York magazine and co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971, Steinem did become a celebrity. With her long blond hair and aviator glasses, she was and is the face of modern-day feminism . Is it possible that in that transformation, we stopped reading her closely because we were watching her so closely?
“It’s one of the ironies of trying to be a writer and an activist at the same time that just when you feel you have the most to write about, you have the least time in which to write it,” Steinem wrote in 1983, explaining the chasm between her fame and the solitary life writing demands. As we consider her legacy, it’s revealing to go back to her early work to witness her voice and passions beginning to take shape.
Despite the limited opportunities in the 1960s for young female aspiring writers, the period was a productive one for Steinem. I love “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions” — a collection of essays written across two decades — because it’s a testament to her early curiosity and hustle. Having grown up poor in Toledo, Ohio, where she had strong memories of debt collectors coming to her door, Steinem spent her first years in New York taking magazine assignments in order to cover the $62.50 a month she owed in rent for the studio apartment she shared with a roommate.
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