Mother and I

Highly Commended, National Biography Award, 2022

At the age of twenty-four, Dimity Ware received a kidney transplant. Her doctors told her she could never have children and would probably die in her thirties. In response, she announced her lesbianism, left her husband, and gave birth to a son.

Ianto Ware revisits his childhood in suburban Adelaide, where his mother – single parent, lesbian feminist, and ardent socialist – waged a four-decade war on her conservative neighbourhood, primarily through the medium of gardening.

Blending the loving wisdom of Ray Gaita, the emotional honesty of Jeanette Winterson, and the humour of Gerald Durrell, this is part family memoir, part history of working class life, and part homage to suburban eccentricity.

Mother and I: the history of a wilful family celebrates the force of character that defies conformity and the love that prevails against bigotry.

‘A gentle redescription of motherhood as an evolving relation, a singular set of possibilities, rather than a reductive category…Ware produces a thoughtful polemic against the forces that shape our society.’ – Sydney Review of Books

‘If only all memoirs were like this: tautly written, droll yet poignant, vividly rendered, historically aware…Ware brings his mother and their relationship to life with tender detachment, sharp detail and such attentiveness to her inner life that one might be reading a novel.’ – Fiona Capp, SMH/the Age.

Author Biography

Ianto Ware is is the author of Twenty-One Nights in July: A Personal History of the Tour de France and Mother and I: The History of a Willful Family, and the long-running zines Westside Angst and Das Papierkrieg. He was the founding director of Adelaide’s Format Festival, producer of the Festival of Unpopular Culture, and CEO of Renew Adelaide. More recently, he was the Co-Director of the National Live Music Office. He lives in Sydney with his partner, the artist Diana Baker Smith, their son Ellis, and cats Judith and Adrienne.