MythsUnderstood: Dionysus

Dionysus has always known what it means to arrive unwanted. His mother died before he was born. His father sewed him into his own body. His childhood was spent hidden from a goddess who wanted him dead. So when Dionysus finally had the freedom to decide what kind of god he would become, he built his entire existence around a simple belief: everyone deserves a place where they can be exactly who they are. He made wine. He gathered the lonely, the strange, and the overlooked. He built a household on the road, fell in love with a woman who chose him with both eyes open, and created festivals where mortals could set down everything the world expected them to be. Then people started saying no. And the god who believed most fiercely in freedom discovered how quickly an invitation could become a demand. From his twice-born beginning and his madness at Hera's hands to Ariadne, Lycurgus, the Minyades, and the horrifying death of Pentheus, Dionysus is finally telling the whole story—including the parts where the god of liberation became something much harder to defend. Funny, intimate, and painfully self-aware, MYTHSUNDERSTOOD: DIONYSUS is the story of a god who built rooms where everyone else could be free—and is still trying to understand why he could never quite stop himself from punishing the people who refused to enter.