The Canaanite Woman

Facilitated by Ben Bagocius on Zoom
The Canaanite Woman is a tribute to mothers of children with severe disabilities

The Canaanite Woman pauses to hear a visionary voice sidelined across biblical history: a mother of a daughter with a severe disability. The poems draw from a figure in the Book of Matthew, an unnamed Canaanite woman, who visits Jesus to speak with him about her daughter’s disability. Matthew’s gospel gives the Canaanite woman’s perspective only eight lines.

Ben’s collection pauses with this mother for considerably longer so that we might hear what she has to teach Jesus and us about hope + thriving in a culture of systemic ableism. The poems pay tribute to caregivers, especially mothers, who raise children with severe disorders. In the book,The Canaanite Woman, Jesus sits down and takes notes about muscular love from this woman prophet who was ahead of Jesus’s time and ours.

Let’s follow her.

$15

Benjamin Bagocius, M.F.A., Ph.D. Writer. Teacher. Mystic.
Faculty in Literature at Bard Early College | Cleveland