My Name Is Why, Lemn Sissay
My Name Is Why, Lemn Sissay
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
Club: $15.99

My Name Is Why

Author: Lemn Sissay

Narrator: Lemn Sissay, Richard Burnip, Zoe Mills

Unabridged: 5 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/14/2011


Synopsis

THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, NEW STATESMAN, METRO, DAILY MAIL, SUNDAY EXPRESS and HERALD

‘A quest for understanding, for home, for answers’ Matt Haig

How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how.

At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth.

This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph.

Sissay reflects on his childhood, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation's best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jane on September 03, 2019

I’ve really liked and admired the strong, pure focus of Lemn Sissay’s voice as a poet and a broadcaster at large every time I’ve had the opportunity to read or hear it. In this incendiary memoir of his childhood at the hands of the Authority (love how he personalised this depersonalised figure in th......more

Goodreads review by Tom on July 22, 2019

If ever there was a book to expose the failures and pointlessness of governments and local authorities, it was this one. This book made me fucking angry. The treatment of Sissay during his 17 years in care is an absolute fucking disgrace and everyone (save a couple of heroes he meets along the way)......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on October 18, 2023

Identity matters, and books like these are important. This is Lemn Sissay's story. Featuring many of the documents from social services in their original form along with Lemn's narrative of how each event translated into his childhood mind, we enter a world where a Black baby boy was put in the care......more

Goodreads review by Sally (whatsallyreadnext) on February 10, 2022

I hadn't heard much about Lemn Sissay's life before reading his memoir My Name is Why but I decided to buy the book as I had seen it a few times via bookstagram. Bookstagram does inspire most of my reading choices these days! In My Name is Why, Lemn Sissay recounts his story of how he spent his child......more