Mother Minotaur

Sarah Ahrens's poetic memoir, Mother Minotaur, explores disability and motherhood through the lens of the Minotaur myth. The collection opens with a female Minotaur lost in the Labyrinth of Crete, tracing a narrative thread that runs back to the origin of her hearing loss and her struggle to understand her young children's differently wired brains. Her experience of confusion and inadequacy intensifies as she encounters mythical figures like Ariadne and Icarus's mother, as well as her sleepwalking son and dreaming mother, before she finally confronts her own fear and self-doubt. How can she find her way out of the labyrinth if loss is something she carries inside her? And does transformation always require sacrifice?Featuring a Pushcart-nominated poem, Mother Minotaur will engage readers interested in the intersection of memoir and myth, the challenge of raising neurodivergent kids in an ableist world, and the way disability informs the labor of being an artist and a mother.

Pages: 86, Hardcover, Finishing Line Press