My Life on the Road

even put ‘Ms.’ on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids’ faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!”

See that purple Harley out there—the big gorgeous one? That’s mine

“I just want to tell you,” she says cheerfully, “how much Ms. magazine has meant to me over the years—and my husband, too. He reads some now that he’s retired. But what I wanted to ask—isn’t one of the women you’re traveling with Alice Walker? I love her poetry.”

Still, I’m hyperconscious of a room full of knife sheaths, jackboots, and very few women.

On our last morning, I enter the lodge alone for an early breakfast, trying to remain both inconspicuous and open-minded

We’ve been invited to a Lakota Sioux powwow celebrating the powerful place that women held before patriarchy arrived from Europe, and efforts now to restore that place.

At the airport, I meet five friends from different parts of the country. We are a diverse group of women—a Cherokee activist and her grown-up daughter, two African American writers and one musician, and me.

I board a plane for Rapid City, South Dakota, and see a lot of people in black leather, chains, and tattoos

Brilliant, warm and challenging.”

—Independent on Sunday

writes powerfully. . .a history of the fight for gender equality. . . also serves as a reminder of the battles feminists have not yet won.”

—The Economist