A Wow of a Memoir

My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Lemn Sissay's memoir, 'My Name is Why', is one of those books written with such understated honesty, such lack of bitterness, that at times you have to remind yourself that what is being described is close to indescribable. As Benjamin Zephaniah said: "The most amazing thing about this book is that it's not made up. This actually happened."

Lemn Sissay began life thinking his name was Norman Greenwood. He lived with his white foster family and sounds like the sweetest child - cheerful, personable, and bright as the proverbial button. Then, when he was eleven years old, the family decided to send him back into the care system, for reasons that remain profoundly dubious, and which were never properly explained to Lemn himself. The hurt of this alone, is hard to imagine. 'Norman' then spent six years in the care system, being moved from one failing institution to the next, hanging on to his self-esteem by his fingernails and somehow - HOW? - retaining a glimmer of faith in the world that had let him down so badly.

The biggest shock however, was yet to come. Just before his eighteenth birthday, 'Norman' is given his birth certificate, thus discovering that his real name is Lemn Sissay, that he is a British Ethiopian, and that his mother had been pleading for his safe return since his birth. The anger, the damage, the bitterness of these revelations, coming on top of years of continued rejections from the foster family, refusing even to see Sissay despite his pleas, are literally impossible to contemplate. And yet, in this remarkable account from the victim of these injustices, it is not acrimony or revenge that we hear in Lemn Sissay's voice, but rather one seeking only to understand in order to make good what has gone so badly wrong.

Lemn Sissay is one of our best-loved poets, and so it is little wonder that this book is written with great lyricism and the sort of word-power that grabs you by the throat as you read. Throughout the telling of his tale, Sissay also cleverly includes actual extracts from the correspondence between the various organisations in charge of his fate. These have a remarkable impact, both by way of validating each dark fact, and for how they offer the most banal counterpoint to the tragedy being played out. They allow us to see the full horror of the story: the life of a little boy, at the mercy of a clunking, narrow-minded, prejudiced system which seemed to prioritise every single petty consideration above the only one that should have mattered - the emotional well-being of the child himself. Like I say, it was at times a hard read.

And yet, this is not a sob story. Lemn Sissay's poems, one of his coping mechanisms through his difficulties, are also scattered throughout the chapters, rays of light in the dark. There is not one hint of self-pity anywhere. Instead, as Sissay takes us, diligently, intelligently, through the facts, there is no disguising the joyful, winning force of his personality. What we are left with is an account of how good can prevail over bad, how a love of life can resist the lure of disintegration, as well as a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity. Lemn Sissay himself shimmers through each sentence like the golden thread in a tapestry - brave, funny, wise and healed. Wow. My jaw is still on the floor.



View all my reviews