Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - My Name is Why

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My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay

20 reviews

eve81's review

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dark hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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amyvl93's review against another edition

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challenging informative sad medium-paced

4.0

Important is a word that feels overused when it comes to non-fiction. However, when it comes to the poet Lemn Sissay's memoir My Name is Why it feels like the best one to use, especially for anyone who works in and around social care and government.

My Name is Why follows Sissay's childhood in care. He is born in 1967 to an Ethiopian unmarried mother, who was in England to study and was sent to a mother and baby home and practically forced to give up her child. He was given a new name and put into foster care with a white family he saw as his family, and is wrenched away from the only home he has known in his early teens into increased institutionalisation.

Sissay weaves his own memories alongside actual documents from the council (Wigan) that were his 'corporate parents'. This gives a stark insight into how social workers and more senior officers in the council discussed Lemn as a child; including ruminating on how his 'colour' means people treat him with undue additional attention, and by extension that he somehow needs to feel less warmth. As new placements are sought, the difference in opinion between Lemn, his social worker and those with more power is painful to read - the moment an Educational Psychologists judgement is put aside is truly jawdropping, as is the reveal of his mother's contact to the local authority. It is painful to see Sissay continually defined by his worse moments, and not allowed to experience genuine teenagehood.

The book ends abruptly but with a sense of hope, and also urgency that children in the care of the state deserve just that, care.

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emotional sad

5.0

Amazing awful book. A great book, really highlights the bad in the care system. I'm sorry that any child had to go through it. But reccomrnd reading.

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pran's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

My Name is Why is honestly an incredible memoir. Lemn Sissay's story itself is an affecting one of overcoming extreme adversity, but it is made all the more engaging by the excellent structure of the book. Interspersing Sissay's first-person narration with social worker reports, and letters between various other people involved helped create a sense of the disparity between child and authority and the lack of control Sissay had over his own life as a young man. One thing I particularly liked was towards the end of the novel, when he included messages from other people who had been placed at the Wood End accommodation and had also experienced the abuse and dehumanisation. This reminds the reader that so many children were put through this torture, and may not have found fortunate lives. While my take-away throughout the book was how admirable Sissay's self-reflection and ability to move on has been, he was by no means self-pitying, or blowing his own trumpet. He was highlighting the consistent dehumanisation and dismissal of young people's needs in the 'care' system (which sometimes seems a misnomer).
As I listened to the book in audio form, I experienced Sissay's narration of his own book, which was wonderful. There is something really special about the writer of a memoir reading it to you, so I am glad I got to experience it.

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