Review: My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay

In 1967, a young Ethiopian woman who was studying in England gave birth to a baby. Not long after, she returned to her native country alone. 

Lemn Sissay – renamed Norman by his assigned social worker – was placed with a white, Baptist couple in Ashton-in-Makerfield. His birth mother would not sign any adoption papers. My Name is Why (2019) charts Sissay’s passage through the care system in Wigan via a combination of his own recollections and reports from the Authority, only recently made availab...