“Take Back the Mic” examines the first cohorts of feminist stand-up comics in the United States, from the years immediately preceding the emergence of the women’s liberation movement through the end of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of comic performances, media coverage, audience reception, and interviews, this account reveals how comics introduced a variety of female perspectives and pro-woman sentiments into American stand-up comedy. It argues that feminist comics used their acts to demand public recognition of their whole personhood and their right to participate fully in cultural life. The entrance of women into stand-up was not merely about the right to perform the same old jokes along with the guys. Rather, feminist comics wielded humor as a tool in order to make their voices heard by audiences unaccustomed to considering women’s perspectives, and advocated for the cultural authority to engage in freer self-expression. In so doing, they reshaped the comedy stage as a site for feminist engagement. In telling the story of the origins and growth of feminist stand-up comedy, “Take Back the Mic,” brings together issues of feminism, politics, and public performance in the later decades of the twentieth century. The comics included here – from Sophie Tucker, Belle Barth, and Jackie “Moms” Mabley to Joan Rivers and Lily Tomlin to Roseanne Barr and Ellen DeGeneres – both reflected and shaped the culture that surrounded them. The rise of feminist comedy was a gradual process, helped along by reciprocal dynamics between the underground and mainstream in which new styles developed on the fringes of mass culture (such as women’s movement venues), and then infiltrated the center (such as comedy clubs and network television). The trajectory of the genre, over many years and across a variety of venues, reveals a range of feminist energy and discourse in periods and arenas previously thought fallow. Comedy constitutes an overlooked area of public life in which feminist actors fought for not just access and equity, but also authority and self-expression. While feminist activists and politicians worked to remove the legal and economic boundaries that circumscribed women’s lives, feminist comics used their platforms to critique the cultural prescriptions that inhibited them, and to offer their own ideas for a better, more truthful, and funnier future.