Influential Books

This is a list of books that changed the way I look at the world. I recommend all of them. I also want to know your recommendations! Please leave them for me!

1. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
2. New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver
3. In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
4. This Bridge Called My Back edited by Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga. I read this book when I was coming out, and it spoke to me more than anything I had ever read.
5. Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros
6. Sor Juana de la Cruz's defense of women's education
7. Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
8. The Tao of Pooh
9. Oral History by Lee Smith
10. Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua
11. Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
12. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
13. What the Bible Really Says about Women by Sheri Adams
14. any of Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz's writings on liberation theology. She was the first to put forth the idea for me that gays most definitely have a place in the church.
15. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
16. The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
17. The Sermon on the Mount
18. Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
19. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
20. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (even named my cat after her)
21. 19 Varieties of Gazelle by Naomi Shihab Nye
22. Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
23. "Carnal Acts" by Nancy Mairs
24. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
25. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom


And a Few Other Non-Book (yet still material and not human) Influences:
Free to Be...You and Me by Marlo Thomas and Friends (music)
Indigo Girls music
Wide Awake (movie)
"Aeolian Harp" by Chopin (music)

There are more for both sections, but date bread is calling my name at the moment. More when I have time.