It's not actually a book, but the short story opened my eyes and got me interested in women's issues and feminism was Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper."

I know that it's pretty much required reading for a lot of highschool kids (or, at least, it was when I was in HS), but it's been my favorite short story ever since then. I just think it's so powerful/shocking/upsetting.

That's a great one, roymac. And since you've opened up the field to nonfiction, I want to add Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.

For nonfiction, I would add

Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born
Katha Pollitt's Reasonable Creatures
Mary Wollstonecrat's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Patricia Hill Collins's Black Feminist Thought
Toril Moi's Sexual/Textual Politics
Mimi Abramovitz's Regulating the Lives of Women

Oh, and for a really oldie-but-goodie, Rachel Speght's 1617 Mouzell for Melastomous. Love it.

I haven't read that many feminist books, but I'd say The Feminine Mystique is my favorite. Parkinson's law of housework still makes me laugh.

Recently? Nobody Passes by Mattilda

Currently reading Look Both Ways by Jennifer Baumgardner, but the jury's still out on it until I finish.

Great question. here are some of my favorites:

Beggars and Choosers (Rickie Solinger)
Bodies that Matter (Judith Butler)
Killing the Black Body (Dorothy Roberts)
Making Women Pay (Rachel Roth)
Feminism Unmodified (Catharine MacKinnon)
Feminist Theory (bell hooks)

I haven’t read many feminist books either, but I really enjoyed reading Susan Bordo, particularly Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.

Oh yes! Loved that one too, sojourner!

"The Laugh of the Medusa" -Helene Cixous

That Sex Which is Not One -Luce Irigaray

The Madwoman in the Attic - Gilbert and Gubar

I know these are all pretty much standard, but they are so great. ooh, and Sexual/Textual Politics.

As for fiction, I think I first became aware of my own feminism through Kate Chopin's The Awakening. I was absolutely astounded. And of course, "The Yellow Wallpaper." Great.

Currently: The Mommy Myth - Meredith Matthews and Susan Douglas and Bachelor Girl by Betsy Israel.

The most influential on my way of thinking was Backlash; it came along at just the right time in history and seems most appropriate in countering the current nanobotic swarm of critics.

Loved The Yellow Wallpaper too. :) Other faves -

Egalia's Daughters, A Satire of the Sexes/Gerd Brantenberg

The Mismeasure of Women/Carol Tavris

Toward a Feminist Developmental Psychology/Patricia Miller

Woman, an Intimate Geography/Natalie Angier (debunks a lot of popular evolutionary psych crap in the media)

The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer

Oh, yeah. The Awakening was fantastic. That, and A Doll's House and Yellow Wallpaper were probably the three most influential pieces of fiction during my high-school years.

Now I've got a reading list started.

When I clicked on the Amazon.com page, there was a link to another booklist: "25 Dangerous Books". It's nice to see how "The Feminine Mystique" and "The Second Sex" qualify to be on the same list as "Mein Kampf."

Personally, I prefer anthologies. The wealth of viewpoints and subjects makes for more interesting reading and more room for interpretation/discussion.

Shaking a Leg – Angela Carter's nonfiction. Three decades of 'looking' at the world in all its forms. Aces.

jrav,
Totally agreed on Madwoman. I think I cited it in about 6 different papers. It totally changed the way I thought about literary criticism, and not just of Victorian works.

Backlash was hugely influential. Before it I was a little 'f' feminist, and after I was a capital F 'Feminist.'

The Edible Woman and Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood were pretty big for me early on too. To say nothing of Handmaid's Tale.

There are more, I'm sure, but my brain is full of cold virus. :(

These are great. I'd add:

Manifesta (Jennifer Baumgardner & Amy Richards)

The Solitude of Self: Thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Vivian Gornick)

Not for ourselves alone: the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (Geoffrey C. Ward)

The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)

Fear of Flying (Erica Jong)

Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

Herland (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

Also Women's Growth in Connection by June V. Jordan et al

Emma Goldman's essays about sex and gender.

And how about some props to Our Bodies, Ourselves and Sisterhood is Powerful?

lyra27 - How could I forget my all-time favorite book, Jane Eyre. (The guilt, the utter guilt.)

EG - Is Our Bodies, Ourselves by Jane Butler? I think I've read it but don't really remember.

As far as I know, its authors were only ever identified as The Boston Women's Collective.

I'm gonna add another Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber.

Would like to second many of the fiction choices, especially Margaret Atwood, and add Mary Gaitskill's name to the list. And the recently published anthology "This is Not Chick Lit" has a whole range of wonderful contemporary women writers.

For non-fiction, "Our Bodies, Ourselves," (1st edition) and "The Feminine Mystique" were early eye-openers back in early teenagehood. Looking forward to reading "The Female Eunuch" and "Of Woman Born"--both sitting in my reading pile at home :)

A few repeats:

Bachelor Girl - Betsy Israel
Manifesta - Jennifer Baumgardner & Amy Richards
The Male Body - Susan Bordo (I still have to read Unbearable Weight, but this is a great book about how the body culture affects men)
Female Chauvinist Pigs - Ariel Levy (awesome, awesome book about raunch culture)
The Beauty Myth & Promiscuities - Naomi Wolf
The Meaning of Wife - Anne Kingston
From Front Porch to Backseat - Beth L. Bailey
The Body Project - Joan Jacobs Brumberg
Lucky - Alice Seabold (fiction)

What a great list - now I'll have plenty of books to read come summer!

I'm reading Manifesta for the first time. The beginning chapters really worked for me, but later ones aren't.

Would books like "Uppity Women of Medeival Times" count? I love Women's History, and can see that as a Feminist book.

I love the "uppity women" series. And also that book by the former NY Times editor about women (mostly overlooked) in American history--can't remember the title but absolutely fantastic.

I have three:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Turbo Chicks edited by Lisa Rundle, et al.
Matilda by Roald Dahl.

That last one was incredibly important to me growing up. Having a heroine who looked and acted like me, and whose mentor was similar to the ones I was lucky enough to have around me was so affirming.

Life and Death by Andrea Dworkin.....I borrowed (and by borrowed I mean I still have it after 7 years) it from my sister and basically credit it for my feminist awakening.

I am also becoming a fan of Antonia Fraser. Her books are on European (mostly England) history, but it can be argued that they also qualify as feminist books. Right now I am reading "Warrior Queens" about women in history who've led nations in war. She also wrote a fantabulous book on Henry VIII's six wives

Beauty Myth is the single book that changed my life the most, because it gave me a good dose of righteous anger to fight back at my body issues with. They didn't go away overnight, but they're a lot better now than they would have been if I hadn't read it. And Backlash is just awesome; I love when she profiles all the high-powered, conservative career women whose careers involve telling other women to shut up and stay home.

Bachelor Girl is a lot of fun, and someone else mentioned the Mommy Myth which I haven't read but seriously want to because Susan Douglas wrote another of my favorite feminist books--Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media (I think that's the title). Hilarious and brilliant.

Also, if we're going to mention fiction authors, I'm going to bring up Clarice Lispector, this amazing Brazilian writer who had a definite feminist bent to a lot of her work (including a short story which uses a chicken as a metaphor for the way women are treated as nothing until they get pregnant, then worshipped, then treated as nothing again).

One of mine is A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf- I can't believe no one's mentioned it. A lot of the others mentioned are awesome, of course.

I haven't read a whole lot of the feminist curricula but the feminist related books that had the most impact on me were

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Do They Hear You When You Cry? by Fauziya Kassindja
The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler

Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation by Leora Tanenbaum was the book that took me from "I'm a feminist but..." to "I'm a feminist."

I still love it and consistantly list it as one of my favorite books.

Drusilla Modjeska The Orchard

Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar and Ariel (restored edition)

A.S. Byatt Little Black Book of Stories

Listen up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (edited by Barbara Findlen) was the first nonfiction feminist book I read and I still go back to it now and then. I was happy to hear that a new edition was recently published. Another perennial fave is Cunt by Inga Muscio. I'm also proud to say that I own a copy of the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanis. While none of us would advocate going out and actually doing what she suggests (even those of us who have felt violent toward Ann Coulter... ha ha) it is a powerful piece of writing and -- I think -- very important to the feminist canon. Last but not least, the BUST Guide to the New Girl Order continues to rock my world.

I also love:

The First voice of Australian feminism: Excerpts from Louisa Lawson's the Dawn, 1888-1895 and a short story by Louisa's son, Henry Lawson, The Stockman's Wife

Maya Angelou I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Wow, I feel kind of illiterate now. I've read so few of those books! I would ask to be forgiven because I'm a scientist, but I'm actually pretty well read. That said:

Cunt (Inga Musico)
How to Heal the Hurt by Hating (Anita Liberty)

I'm not exactly sure that everyone would agree that How to Heal is a feminist book, but I think that it is. If you know someone who is going through a bad break up, get it for them. They will love you forever.

And how about:
Wicked (Gregory Maguire)

And the poem by Ogden Nash: The Adventures of Isabel.
Isabel is my hero.

I'm looking at my bookshelf, and I own a whole lot of books written by men. Maybe I should try to change the gender balance in my apartment before I work on my university.

"They Led the Way: 14 American Women"

Ok, it's for little kids, but my mom got it for me when I was around second grade and I've known ever since I was a feminist. Every little girl should read it!

And as long as we're adding in non-books, I have to say "Iron-Jawed Angels," too.

Ok, here's a wonderful picture book that nobody but me had as a kid: Nice Little Girls. It tells the story of Jackie, a little girl with short hair who likes to wear overalls, whose first-grade teacher won't let her build a box, because woodworking is for boys, or run the film projector. Jackie's parents are completely sympathetic and supportive to her and tell her that nice little girls do too build boxes if they want to. Eventually, Jackie is befriended by Susie, who looks like a "nice little girl" with long hair and dresses, but takes Jackie home and shows her this massive, cool, electric train set that she likes to play with.

I loved that book.

I recently read Manifesta by Jenny Baumgardner and Amy Richards and it was pretty inspirational and empowering and encouraging for me as a young feminist.

Cassandra -- yes, Sor Juana, so awesome! Just discovered her a few months back....

And DT -- yay for Wicked! Even if it's not overtly feminist, Elphaba is definitely a feminist character, and one of the most complex female protagonists out there....not to mention all the archetypal witch stuff...

I found some of Barbara Ehrenreich's earlier work to be really interesting, especially 'For Her Own Good:150 years of the experts' advice to women' (with Deirdre English).

Also, when I was around 10 or 11, I found the Karen Cushman books: Catherine Called Birdy, and the Midwive's apprentice. If you have young daughters (or sons, or just want something fun to read for yourself) I highly recommend her. I think she has some newer stuff out too.

The Beauty Myth was the first feminist book I ever read, and it got me hooked.

other favorites (sorry if these are repeats): Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Judith Halberstam, Susan Brownmiller

and I know these are controversial/radical, but I don't think we would be anywhere without Dworkin, Solanas, Sheila Jeffreys, and Janice Raymonde (sp?)

I heard a feminist explain once that we need the real militants in the movement because they make the rest of us look more benign, and then our demands are more palatable to mainstream society.

I'm not sure about that, but in any case, as a sexual violence survivor and a former sex worker, these women's words really validated and made political some of my experiences.

it's tough to join this conversation so late, when so many books already mentioned have made me nod and say: yes,uh huh, of course and oh yeah! that one. as well as, ooh i gotta check that out.

i have to agree that the 'listen up' anthology was huge for me, and another anthology called 'minding the body' edited by patricia foster. a zine anthology called 'a girl's guide to taking over the world' also rocked my young world, which by the way is still quaking. additionally, comics by lynda barry, especially the book called, i believe, 'my perfect life.'
when i think of how much these and other books meant to me and who i am: wow. enormous. thanks for starting this post.

Landscape for a Good Woman - Carolyn Kay Steedman, who tells her mother's story and her girlhood story of class-stratified postwar England. with harsh, lucid theoretical insight.

one of my favorite kids' books is Louise Fitzhugh's Nobody's Family is Going to Change, which always takes a backseat to Harriet the Spy, but is fantastic, and fantastically 70's. Emma, ten years old and frustrated with her sexist, stodgy family, rebels - she wants to be a lawyer, her little brother wants to be a tap dancer. it's a daring book, dealing with race, gender, class, and radicalism. What other children's book includes the formation of a consciousness-raising group?

The feminist book that has had the biggest impact on me is Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks. It informs my thinking to this day—15 years after I first read it.

I’m also quite fond of the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas. Her extremes tend to turn people off, but she had some excellent analysis on things like education and community. Looking at the extremes can help us better understand where we are at ourselves. She also made wonderful use of language, it reads as spoken word prose poetry to me — and is perhaps best read aloud.

Favorites as in blew me away (as I have read many)

Feminism without Borders by Chandra Mohanty
Sisterhood is Powerful by Robin Morgan
Angry Women by Andrea Vale
Black Macho and the Myth of Superwoman by Michele Wallace
Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin
Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
Cunt by Inga Muscio

Favorite children's feminist book

The Pippi Longstocking series

The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood ignited my feminism in mid teens - great fiction

A few more to add:

The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader - Amelia Jones (Ed.)

Gender and Nation - Nira Yuval-Davis

Sexing the Body - Anne Fausto-Stirling

This has been such a lovely thread. Jessica has one hell of a favorites list. Perfect.

The Everyday World as Problematic by Dorothy Smith

A bit of a shameless plug but I helped edit this incredible book which is a series of essays by female politicians on the Hill sharing their experiences as women, balancing work and family, and being in the male-dominated sphere of politics. The books also provides tips for young women to get active advocating for issues they believe in and to take leadership positions in politics in their schools, local communities, and upwards.

The book is Skirting Tradition: Women in Politics Speak to the Next Generation.

Side note: I also recommend reading Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" and Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" a novel re-telling the bible from the viewpoint of the women (Sarah, Rachel, etc). Definitely found it to be empowering.

Well I was in college from 88 to 92, and I haven't kept up feminist study since then apart from reading reviews and the like.

My likes: Paglia, Roiphe, and that's about it.

My dislikes: Wolf, Steinhem, MacKinnon, Dworkin, Faludi.

I guess I qualify for trolldom now. That's what you call people whose views differ from yours right? Call the censors!

Stylish, you reminded me of the mind blowing series of books by Cathleen Rountree with interviews of famous, non-traditional women in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. It blew my mind because I was extremely panicked about turning 30 and thought my life was over. The engaging interviews showed me I could bloom in my 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s!

On Women Turning 30 by Cathleen Rountree

On Women Turning 40: Coming into Our Fullness by Cathleen Rountree

On Women Turning 50: Celebrating Mid-Life Discoveries by Cathleen Rountree

On Women Turning 60: Embracing the Age of Fulfillment by Cathleen Rountree

On Women Turning 70: Honoring the Voices of Wisdom by Cathleen Rountree

I did an independant study course in college on Maragaret Atwood, so...yeah. All of the aforementioned, plus The Robber Bride.
The Yellow Wallpaper definitely made an impression on me.
Another book that sticks out in my memory is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I'm not sure if it's considered "feminist" but I remember a lot of it struck me that way when I read it, years ago. Did anyone else who read it get that impression?

Vervain - Oh yes, definitely. And The Color Purple, Alice Walker - how could I forget that?

I think that a lot of African American literature strikes a cord with feminist literature. They are having a discussion over at I Blame the Patriarchy about The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone and discuss how racism is part and parcel with sexism (not necessarily about one being worse than the other but about racism as an extension of sexism), and I think I've definitely always felt that.

For another, Sula by Toni Morrison. Very definitely a feminist text in my mind.

the three most important books i read in high school:
-"the handmaid's tale" margaret atwood
-"the color purple" alice walker
-"beloved" toni morrison

some of my other favorites include:
-manifesta
-the bell jar
-what makes a man: ed. rebecca walker
-the second sex
-gender outlaw: kate bornstein
-the science question in feminism: sandra harding

in addition to everything by judy & bell, my absolute favorite is 'this bridge called my back'.

i also love:
-spivak's 'can the subaltern speak'
-'women and revolution' (with the famous essay by heidi hartmann -- 'the unhappy marriage of marxism and feminism')
-'decentering the center' edited by uma narayan and sandra harding
-'gender & nation' by nira yuval davis
-'feminism, postmodernism & development' edited by marianne marchand & jane parpart
... and, ok, about a million others

Absolutely anything by Toni Morrison qualifies as awesome feminist literature, IMHO.

I however, am partial to The Bluest Eye.

I also Love (with a capital L) Manifesta, because it explains feminism in plain English to the I'm a Feminist, but... crowd.

Also The Body Project (the name of the author escapes me), The Awakening, The Scarlet Letter, and That Takes Ovaries (an anthology of "bold women and their brazen acts"). Also, Our Bodies Ourselves is simply indispensable.

I read a great deal of feminist literature, but you just can't seem to beat the classics. My non-fiction favorite goes to Sexual Politics by Kate Millet, and my favorite fiction goes to The Awakening by Kate Chopin. However, I do very much enjoy Jennifer Weiner's work, as well as Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs.

I just wanted to echo many of the comments here and say "thanks!" I finally graduate from college this June and I look forward to reading for my own enjoyment. I haven't been able to do so in years! My favorites to read are social commentary, biographies, and any non-fiction relating to social, health, and feminist issues. I appreciate your lists, particularly those who gave a bit of background and explanation. :)

I realize I'm joining this discussion really late, so i'm not sure if anyone will actually read this.

Favorite Feminist Children's Book: The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch and Michael Marchenko. I love a story where the smart, resourceful girl rescues the petty, vain, superficial boy and then refuses to marry him.

Of course, Our Bodies, Ourselves is indespensible, as are many of the other books that have been mentioned, so I'll try to point out a couple that I didn't see mentioned yet.

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

The Meaning of Wife by Anne Kingston

and The Last Time I Wore a Dress by Daphne Scholinski. This one is really more about trangender issues, but there are a lot of feminist issues represented in a memoir about a girl who is locked in a mental institution for being an "inappropriate" female. It's a powerful story. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I should let you know that I'm a little biased because the author (whose name is now Dylan) is a good friend of mine.

Joanna Russ "The Female Man"

My guilty sci fi AND feminist pleasure.

I'd add more but there's already a great list :)

Here are some of mine...

Tell Me a Riddle - Tillie Olson "I stand Here Ironing" is a great short story

Little Disturbances of Man - Grace Paley

Against Our Will - Susan Brownmiller

Transforming a Rape Culture

Fierce Attachments - A Memoir --Vivian Gornick

The Dialectic of Sex - Shulamith Firestone...she has an article on Love (I forget exactly what its called) but it changed the way i saw my relationships with men forever!

Wow - what a fantastic long list of great reads! I'm so glad this thread was posted (but my wallet is going to cry for a while, because I'm going to have to go out and buy a lot of these books).

Here's my contribution:
Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women's History of the World by Rosalind Miles. This is a very fast, sharp and witty read with interesting tidbits of herstory that most of us aren't taught in school. It felt really good to know that I as a woman had some culture to back me up in a man's world.

The Bitch in the House ed. Cathi Hanauer. Anthology of personal stories of marriage/non-marriage, life, etc. by a variety of noted women.

Kiss My Tiara by Susan Jane Gilman. This is a perennial favorite of mine - hilarious, empowering advice to all women on how to live your own life out loud, save money. etc.

Ooh--had to check back and make sure CUNT has on here (how did I forget that?!). Also I would add THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER, a novel by fierce lady Octavia Butler, who passed away recently and was one of the only women, esp. women of color, writing science fiction. The main character in this novel is a 15 year-old girl in a very realistic and not too distant post-apocalyptic America, who begins to create her own theology as she tries to escape to Canada.

This has been such a lovely, kind-hearted thread.

Children's book which made me a feminist: Free to Be You and Me

Recently: Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide

A couple I love that haven't been mentioned:

"The Women's Room" by Marilyn French

"Woodswoman series" by Anne LaBastille
(Non-fiction about a woman who builds her own log cabin and lives in it in the Adirondacks for over 30 years. Not specifically about feminism, but great books to read about a strong intelligent woman living her life on her own terms.)

Hope I'm not too late to the party - Unbending Gender, by Joan Williams. She nails it.

Someone has to give a shout out to Gayle Rubin's "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex."

"Unbearable Weight" by Susan Bordo.

Second Sex. As the comment about Plato runs... everything since is just footnotes.