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A review by amyvl93
My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Sexual assault, Abandonment, and Mental illness