This chapter explores the post–World War II period in the United States, charting the postwar feminist essay in three directions: first, as a site of consciousness-raising during feminism’s second wave; second, as a space for feminist critiques of feminisms during the so-called third wave; and third, in its contemporary iteration in a revived consciousness-raising context: the #MeToo essay. The chapter draws together formally and contextually diverse texts into a longer conversation about how the essay can be read as a politicized and politicizing literary form. These texts include nonfiction subgenres often thought to be subordinate to the essay: an article, a collectively authored set of papers, a prose poem, a memoir, and a victim impact statement. The chapter argues that what makes these texts “feminist” and “essays” – despite significant formal differences – is their shared engagement with critical, documentary, and experiential literary modes and their stakes in connecting the individual to politically invested collectives, past and future. These five essays explicitly address gender and contingent forces of oppression that both bond and trouble emancipatory collectives.