I first heard Lemn Sissay talking about his childhood experiences on Radio 4 in 2009. At that time he was still fighting Wigan social services for sight of the official dossier on his years as a child in care, fostered at first and then dumped back in the system and institutionalised in care homes and then a remand home. Eighteen years of his life stored in an Iron Mountain data facility. He’d been asking for his files, the story of his life, since he came of age.
It was not easy to forget that programme; the banal cruelties of the system and Sissay’s resolute dignity in talking about them. At 18 he was told that the name he had been given by his foster parents was not his birth name. But it was too late: at 14 Lemn had had his initials tattooed on his arm, using the first name given to him by his first social worker, whose name was Norman. It’s still there. He was also given a letter by his mother in which she asks: ‘How can I get Lemn back? I want him to be with his own people, his own colour. I don’t want him to face discrimination.’
Sissay’s career as a writer and performance poet has never flinched from observing the way that children in care are treated, with not enough attention paid to the confusion, absence and loneliness at the heart of their individual stories. Now he has written a memoir, My Name Is Why, fuelled by his determination to make things better for other children in a similar situation and by the quiet courage and relentless honesty of someone who has not stopped feeling bitter but won’t let it destroy the rest of his life.
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