In a transformative and genre-bending memoir, Maggie Nelson explores the challenges and complexities of motherhood during her pregnancy while she grapples with her own gender as she comes to terms with Harry Dodge, the husband/father-to-be. The Argonauts is a work of fierce interrogation and reflection that offers fresh, fearless commentary on desire and feminism at the turn of the twenty-first century.

In a novel that graces the New York Times bestsellers list, and where gender is as fluid and queer as the family it describes, Maggie Nelson tells the story of her mother’s romantic liaisons with other women. At the centre are two mothers who inhabit a shifting relationship between themselves and their newly formed families; one of these women is gay, and both are feminists: Nelson’s mother, Laura Hulbert, was an artist and ceramist; Dodge loved Laura deeply but always feared her anger.

The Argonauts is an unforgettable portrait of one woman’s process of self-discovery and transformation. “I was gay before it was cool,” Maggie Nelson writes in the opening pages of her beautiful memoir, The Argonauts. She tells a story that—with wit and grace—is at once personal and fiercely contemporary: a love story between two artists who live to make art through their home together, teaching each other how to make mistakes and learn from them.

About The Argonauts Book

A timely and genre-bending memoir that offers fresh and fierce reflections on motherhood, desire, identity, and feminism.

At the center of The Argonauts is the love story between Maggie Nelson and the artist Harry Dodge, who is fluidly gendered. As Nelson transforms pregnancy, she explores the challenges and complexities of mothering and queer family-making.

Writing in the tradition of public intellectuals like Susan Sontag, Nelson uses arresting prose even as she questions the limits of language. The Argonauts is an intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of love, language, and family.