Assignment 3: My life on the road

Travel is always very exciting because we have the opportunity to jump out of the comfort zone and enjoy the sense of fresh and challenges during the trip. Nowadays, travel is relatively easy for us with the development of science and technology: we don’t need to worry about getting lost due to GPS would bring us to the destination; we do not have to worry about being hungry because Yelp can tell us where is the nearest restaurant from us etc. For most people, travel is more about enjoying the tasty food and beautiful scenery, while we may have little chance to converse with locals to understand what life in the place and cultures, and even not enough money to support us always on the road.

My Life on The Road shows me a different method of travel: Gloria, the author, told us that she was travel with the whole family when she was a little girl. She was tired of migrating life and desire settle down in one place when she grows up, but Gloria has spent the rest of her life on the road ultimately. During the trip, she has the opportunity to listen to others opinion and established a deep link with a person who she has met, especially women. Finally, as a feminist and social activist, Gloria voiced for women and fight for women’s rights around the world.

What impressed me most about this book which chapter I have finished is Gloria's experience of traveling in India at a young age. From Talking Circle, she has been taught “If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye to eye.” In addition, Gloria’s travel in women-only railway cars introduce another truth: in India, women without good educated are not as ignorant as most people think, they know how to protect themselves and birth control due to these women knew how painful they were suffering from many pregnancies and births. However, they can only secretly implement birth control. Last semester, the professor of environmental ethic discussed with us that how to effectively control population growth and reduce human damage to the environment, one of the results pointed out that improving women’s education is help to delaying female fertility that may contribute to the slowdown in population growth, and also help to improve the quality of the population. But, my doubt is that why no academic research points out men also should responsible for population growth, illiteracy men would be ruder and ignorant than uneducated women. Many times, women just a victim because of they are social low status and cannot voiced rights for themselves. I am glad to know that Indira Gandhi, who also has same travel experience in women-only railway cars, took on the controversy of creating the first national family planning program after she becomes India’s prime minister. This is good for India’s women because one of them break the glass ceiling and fight for their rights to protect them.