Book - My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay

I heard about Lemn Sissay only a couple of years ago when this book came out. A friend invited me to one of the book launch events and I knew it would be a tough read. I was wrong, it is a horrifying read. 

It’s taken me a week after completing it so stop myself from crying when I go past it as it lies on the coffee table.

I need to write this so I can pop it on the shelf and try not to think about it. I’m surprised it only gave me one sleepless night as I imagine for hundreds of young boys, the nightmare is recurring a generation later.

Lemn was first handed over to his foster family, to an 'excellent little mother' as a baby when his Ethiopian mum unexpectedly found herself pregnant during an educational trip to the UK.

Almost four decades later, The Authorities finally told him the truth about his stolen life and identity, after a 30-year campaign.

His foster parents, who later went onto have 3 of their own children, were religious. He couldn’t understand how you can love a God, much like he liked chocolate, but fear him. The Greenwoods thought all African children needed saving but didn’t relate to MLK or Mohammed Ali as possible role models for their foster son they called Nigel Greenwood.

His mum never invested in an afro comb so instead, Lemn was told he had a medical condition and went through eight years of the unnecessary violence of 'hair sore'. Amazingly, a chance meeting with Erroll Brown - who got him his first afro comb - told him this. 

He endured what he called 'underlying unkindness'. He had a pretty regular sibling rivalry with his younger brother Christopher and Lemn would always beat him in the race home. His mum would agree with Christopher that it was he who had won, giving a knowing look to her foster son. Underlying unkindness.

During 17 years in 'care', Lemn was never assessed until he went into what amounts to a detention centre. Straight into Orwell’s 1984 with a uniform, deathly silence - or risk beatings - with no charges levied against him. His social worker wasn't allowed in and the outside was now another world with one more year to go until he became an adult. Unbelievably cruel.

Having endured a system that pretended it cared, at Woodside, 'it stopped pretending'. Here when the psychologist asked him what sort of tree he was he answered poet tree. Such grace and humour where most of us would have frozen into a ball and never thawed.

Throughout My Name is Why, there is a stark contrast between what people, teachers, foster parents, the social worker’s reports say and what The Authority records.

I’m grateful this is a quick read and I thought I’d got off lightly, just being upset and angry rather than horrified, until [spoiler alert] the last few chapters.

Printing comments from others repeatedly abused by the 'white men with added smirks' was the toughest read. I had to force myself through tears. If this was a film - I'd have muted it fast-forwarded and covered my eyes until it was over.

We are a terrible society. I was leaving school ready to see the world and Lemn was being locked up and abused. At 17. Having spent his whole life being lied to and without a family.

I cried the whole evening after I read this. So angry and upset about how society has treated Lemn, those young boys in Woodside - 40 of whom bravely came forward with their own accounts.

I’m Horrified.

Horrified this may be happening now.

Horrified that I could have met a child that was being abused in a classroom I’ve worked in.

Horrified that we are not doing enough to prevent it.

If anyone in children's care refuses to read this book I will be suspicious.