I definitely agree with Meghan and some others who mentioned The Handmaid’s Tale, works of fiction are really important too! One of the most awesome papers I’ve written yet for school was on Handmaid’s Tale and LHoD. I would also look up the short fiction of one Meghan McCarron, especially “The Flying Woman.”

In addition to having been pleasantly enlightened by “Dialectics of Sex” (thanks for finally getting me to read it, Twisty) I agree with TwissB that Ehrenreich and English’s “For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women” is pretty eye opening. Alexandra says read Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” and I thought it was fantastic. I just read Amanda Marcotte’s “It’s a Jungle” which has the usual straight-ahead razor-sharp analysis you expect from her combined with awesomely snarky survival suggestions.

Some other books that haven’t been mentioned:
Rachel Maines’ “The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria,’ the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)” is a serious sleeper that digs deeper into the same medical sexism Erenreich and English do, plus a seriously painful-if-you’re-a-man dissection of heteronormativity, phallocentrism, and plain old dude-itude.

Then there’s Stephanie Coontz’s “Marriage, a History,” which pretty thoroughly dismantles… well… *everybody’s* stereotypes of what “traditional” marriage even was, assuming there ever was such a thing. (Startling but supported claim: the ancient Greeks, while obviously not at all anti-patriarchs, switched to democracy in part to break the hold of then-dominant patterns of alliances through patriarchal marriage. Go figure!)

I’m not sure Joan Sewell’s “I’d Rather Eat Chocolate” would meet the Twisty separatist standard but it’s a pretty cool, very personal analysis of the “what’s wrong with us/you women’s libido” industry and offers some interesting experiments in asexuality as an alternative to separatism.

bell hooks’ “Feminism is for Everyone” is great because it’s short, it uses small words, and its pretty accessible to people who want or need a first-time introduction to the variety of ways to get into feminism.

I don’t know if “Fat is a Feminist Issue” is still respected but when I read it back in the 1980s the unapologetic connection they made between weight, space, presence, and power gave me a heck of a lot to think about.

And by the way, just before I found this post, Twisty, I mentioned over at my place that I was interested in feminist books that would be suitable for my eight-year-old daughter and, for that matter, eleven-year-old son and their elementary-school classmates. So far I’ve got one person who said her mom gave her easy-reader biographies of first-wave feminists, which is actually a pretty great idea, but other than that it’s been other people saying “hey if you hear of any good ones let me know.” So anyway, even though it’s not necessarily down a spinster aunt’s alley I’m wondering can you recommend some good books or authors for young people?

I was raised by a 2nd waver feminist mom and read Brownmiller, Ephron, etc. when I was a teen, but it was her novels and poems that really helped me to understand what was going on in my society and among many women and even inside myself. They also helped to provide context for women’s history and struggle.

Some of my favorite novels by her:

*Small Changes
- set in the late 1960s and 1970s, mostly Boston area

* Braided Lives
- set in Detroit, Ann Arbor & New York in 1950s - coming of age novel showing how lack of good contraception and illegal abortion, along with so many ridiculous beliefs about women warped and destroyed so many women’s lives

* Gone to Soldiers
- historical novel of WWII - most of the characters are women - a factory worker, a woman pilot, a woman resistance fighter, a woman war correspondent.

*City of Darkness, City of Light
- Excellent novels of the French Revolution, I didn’t know
about our feminist foremothers of the 1780s before I read this book.

* Woman on the Edge of Time

*He, She, and It

- Both are great Science Fiction w/ feminist themes. Woman on the Edge of Time has some Shulamith Firestone elements & invented the great non-gendered pronoun “per” (person)

Her novels address feminist issues, issue of sex and power and politics. They also are good as novels - you want to keep turning the pages.

Her poetry is also excellent, some of my favorite of her poetry books are:

*Circles on the Water

*The Moon is Always Female

*My Mother’s Body

Her official website:
http://www.margepiercy.com/

My feminism has been reinvigorated in the last few weeks of reading IBTP. My feminism also has been recharged with my transition into veganism and my interest in animal rights. So, I second Stella’s recommendation (and I think it was, sadly, the first time mentioned on the list, Stella) of The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams. Whenever I read another wrongheaded post on veganism and AR activism on Feministing, I pull my hair wondering why they just don’t read this already.

I’d also like to add a book that isn’t about feminism per se but really saved and continues to save me from the self-loathing and shame that comes from childhood sexual abuse: The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. When I finally read a few pages for the first time, I started crying in the middle of Barnes and Noble because I’d never read anything that so completely let me off the hook for what happened to me. It places the blame squarely on the abusers but isn’t a knee-jerk, one-sided view of abuse, which was so helpful. It understands the complexity of abuse, particularly since so much sexual abuse occurs, not with stranger molesters lurking in alleyways but within families and amongst people who have some sort of relationship prior to the actual physical abuse taking place. THAT understanding is what saved me and what made sense to me. Additionally, the book and the companion workbook also are full of practical, helpful exercises and you can read as much or as little as a time as you need.

One favorite of mine is Gerda Lerner’s The Creation of Patriarchy, a great myth-busting and feminist introduction to the history of the idea. Fascinating and well worth reading.

Eliza

(Sorry I can’t seem to italicize the title. Now you know what a geek I am.)