Book Review: My Name Is Why By Lemn Sissay

Picture, if you will, a world where from birth your every action, no matter how small or mundane, is meticulously documented by a shadowy group known as The Authority with a capital A. If you’re anything like me, you’d think that sounds like the plot to a dystopian young adult novel. Unfortunately, this is not the synopsis for a Hunger Games knockoff, it is the real-life story of renowned poet, and author Lemn Sissay as recounted in his book My Name Is Why. My Name Is Why is not just a memoir, it is an indictment and exposure of the failures of the British Care System. It is the story of a boy who fell through the cracks of a system not designed with him in mind, and how he pulled himself out to become the man who was named the official poet for the 2012 Olympics among many other accomplishments.

In order to write about this book properly, some background information must be given. In 1967 a young Ethiopian woman, a student in Britain, gave birth to a boy. Against her wishes he was taken by social services and placed in long term foster care with a working class, strict Baptist couple called David and Catherine Greenwood. Once placed with his foster parents his name was changed from Lemn Sissay to the more anglicised Norman Greenwood, and he was told his birth mother had given him up and wanted nothing to do with him; when the reality was, that she wrote to the Wigan council in an effort to get him back. The most charitable interpretation of this possible is to say social services were well intentioned but misguided, doing what they felt was best for Sissay. A less charitable interpretation would be to say this was an example of state sanctioned abduction, and child trafficking, as his mother was pressured into giving him up; ultimately doing so unwillingly. It was basically kidnapping with paperwork and a veneer of legality, and respectability.

While I read it, I was shocked but not surprised at the way time and again the adults in his life let him down. Racism has its tentacles buried deep in every aspect of Sissay’s childhood, and across his time in the care system. From an early age he was viewed with more suspicion than you would expect to levy against a child. Small things here and there which to most people would be considered normal parts of growing up were instead viewed as proof that he was amoral and a thief. The grand crimes they charged him with was stealing biscuits, and extra pieces of cake, and at one point blowing up over an argument and shouting that he wanted to kill his family. He was eleven at the time. I have no children of my own, but I have a young nephew and he’s taken sweets, and shouted at me before but I didn’t take it as evidence that he’s amoral. He’s a child acting like a child and nothing more, and so was Sissay. Reading the reports from them I found myself asking multiple times do the Greenwoods not remember what it was like to be a child? School reports had a similar tone to them at times, he was praised for doing well at school right up until he started surpassing his foster brother (the Greenwoods oldest biological child) Christopher. To quote the book directly “Spoke to Mr. Graves several times on the phone and eventually visited the school. He felt that Norman’s successes were too many for Chris to cope with.” I think the racism at play here is obvious, especially looking at these reports with 2023 eyes. His teachers, and foster parents were perfectly fine with his doing well in school, right up until he started to do too well for them to be comfortable with. At times, reading some of these reports, I got the feeling that the teachers and social workers were about two sentences away from using the word ‘uppity’ to describe him. At a rate of what seems to be once every few months a new report or article will be published exposing the racism seemingly hardwired into the DNA of the care and foster system. It’s one thing to read an article about the failings of the system, but it’s another entirely to read a book where those failings and the negative effects they had on Sissay’s mental health, sense of self, and wellbeing are laid bare.

This book, thanks to Sissay’s extensive use of documents from the social services file on him, is not just an autobiography, but also an example of what journalism should be in an ideal world. He uses these documents to expose the truth of what the care system was like, and what it did to him. Every story he tells, every claim he makes, every injustice he writes about comes with receipts. Reading some of these documents felt like watching a horror film and complaining about every mistake the characters on screen make. I could see the unforced errors the adults responsible for him, made throughout his childhood and similarly to how I want to shout “no, don’t investigate that mysterious noise” at the TV, I found myself wanting to shout “no, don’t send him to that care facility” at the book. At twelve years old the Greenwoods kicked him out of the only home he had ever known, and for the rest of his adolescence he was shuffled through a series of children’s homes each one somehow worse than the last. The homes he was sent to become increasingly prisonlike as time went on, culminating in Wood End Assessment Centre where he was deprived of love or affection, and treated like a criminal. Again, reading that even something as simple as a hug was too much to hope for has me wondering if any of these adults remember being a child? This treatment of Sissay, and all the other children in the homes with him show the danger of too many levels of abstraction, and layers of red tape that can come from any bureaucracy. There’s a point where children stop being children and become names on a page. They stop being kids to be nurtured and encouraged, and start being hoodlums to be supressed and controlled. Sissay even included testimonials from other adults sharing some of their experiences at Wood End as children so there can be no doubt that the abuse was widespread and Sissay was not one isolated case in an otherwise functioning system. The one person who showed any real care or empathy for Sissay was his social worker Norman Mills who seemed to be Sissay’s main point of contact in all matters to do with his care in the system. Several times through the book we see Mills advocating on his behalf through letters, though it is clear his ability to help is constrained and limited. His hands were tied by the very system that was meant to help Sissay.

While Sissay did eventually triumph over adversity and find success through his writing and poetry this is not a feel-good story with a happy storybook ending for all involved. The system wasn’t magically improved, the adults who had a duty of care to Sissay and failed him weren’t fired, or even reprimanded. They continued to hold their positions, and considering when this all happened most likely continued failing more children potentially for decades after Sissay only to retire unaware of the damage they did. Sissay doesn’t end the book with a tearful and heartfelt reunion with his biological mother, or a final confrontation with his foster family. While he would go on to meet his biological mother, that happened when he was 21, after the time frame covered in this book. There is no big event that brings closure here, just a boy who eventually managed to make a small corner of the world to call his own and aged out of the system. It would be easy to take some small solace in the idea that this all happened forever ago in the old days, but this happened in the 1970’s and that’s recent. It’s recent enough that Sissay is younger than my dad, and only about twenty years older than me. Still, despite all of this I would recommend that as many people as possible read this book because I think it’s important that people feel as outraged about what was done to Sissay as I did. This is about as far from a fun read as it is possible to get, but it is an important one, and one that will stick with the reader long after they have finished it.

You can buy this book here: https://tinyurl.com/2cyhrha9