Cynthia Banham on mothers and maternal inheritance
A free event hosted by Gordon Library.
Date
6.30pm–7.30pm Wednesday 6 May 2026
Location
Gordon Library
799 Pacific Hwy, Gordon, 2072
Cynthia Banham, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards shortlisted writer and former journalist, returns with Mother Shadow – a deeply moving memoir about maternal inheritance, parenting with a disability and the standards we set for ourselves.
Mother Shadow opens with the uncovering of a family secret. The author’s great-grandmother was not an orphan, as she’d been told, but a foundling, relinquished at birth by a mother who ‘did not consent to be named’.
Troubled by her rush to judgement of the ancestor who relinquished a child, the author becomes fixated on uncovering the mother’s identity and piecing together the fragments of her life, a quest that takes her and her family to Bologna.
Cynthia Banham is a full-time writer and part-time habitat gardener. Previously, she worked as a lawyer, journalist and academic. After surviving a plane crash with life-changing injuries she can no longer move easily through nature, but nature can move around her.
