Page 56 Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019
— and was sent ‘four thick folders
of documents’ by Wigan Council.
Those records, spanning 18 years,
form the body of this book. Sissay’s
story is given extraordinary power
by photocopies and scans of the
actual documents — it is like look-
ing over his shoulder as he reads
fuzzy-typed social work reports,
brusque handwritten notes in
margins, and official letters.
Sissay’s foster parents were
strict, but they did set out to love
the little boy — asking him to call
them Mummy and Daddy.
The Greenwoods went on to have
three children of their own, which
must have been confusing for the
little black child who soon felt
isolated and unloved.
Social work reports logged
behavioural problems such as
fighting with the Greenwoods’ son,
Christopher; Sissay recalls only
normal sibling rough and tumble.
He longed for the woman he loved
as a mother (the only one he had
ever known) to sing him to sleep
as she once had, but Catherine
had withdrawn affection.
He was caned as his parents
believed the Devil was working
within him. At 12, he became
difficult, eating cake without
permission (oh, heinous crime)
and staying out late at night.
The Greenwoods couldn’t cope
and returned him to social services.
They didn’t want to see him again.
With tragic restraint, Sissay writes:
‘They were my mum and dad. This
was my family.’ Arriving at Wood-
fields children’s home, he thinks:
‘Mum and Dad are never coming
back. No one is coming back. You’ve
lost everyone... It’s your fault.’
His birthday comes and goes
with nothing from his family.
In the children’s home, he is sub-
jected to racist abuse. Lonely andmisunderstood, he shows his
anger. He discovers Bob Marley,
experiments with drugs, begins to
write poetry, spirals downwards...
But what if he had known that
his birth mother had written to
Wigan Council (‘the Authority’) in
1968 to ask how she could get her
baby back?S
He wrote: ‘He needs to
be in his own country,
with his own colour, his
own people.’
She wanted contact with the
Greenwoods. She was refused.
Then, when Lemn was three-and-
a-half, the Authority informed
Yemarshet they would take full
custody because she was judged
to have ‘abandoned’ the child.
In 1978, a social worker reports:‘There is a letter on file from
Norman’s mother, written in 1968,
requesting that he be returned to
her in ethiopia — perhaps Norman
should be made aware of this?’
Somebody has scrawled beneath
in capitals: ‘NOT YeT I THINK.’
Finally, Sissay is sent to ‘a more
disciplined environment’, Wood
end Assessment Centre. He is, in
effect, imprisoned without trial.
‘There were two sorts of child
inmates: young people on remand
(awaiting court appearances) and
young people in care... we were all
treated like charged criminals...
‘Anybody who stepped out
of line was beaten... This horrific
place was where the system
stopped pretending.’
An educational psychologist
writes a report notable for its
‘insight and sympathy’ for the
creative teenager. The Authorityis unimpressed and assesses
him, in its own way, as ‘a youth
of average intelligence’.
Before his 18th birthday, Sissay
is placed in a flat by himself with
his own damaged life to salvage —
and somebody leaves an Olivetti
typewriter (‘a thing of beauty to
me’) for him. Who was it?
There are many aspects of
Sissay’s later life I wanted to know
about — wishing he had explained
what happened when he took the
Authority to court, and what it was
like finally to meet his ethiopian
family. I imagine that may be in
the next volume.
For now, Sissay has given us a
blistering condemnation of the
‘care’ system — and his powerful
voice asking ‘why?’ (the meaning
of ‘Lemn’ in his mother’s language)
is raised on behalf of all children
who have been its victims.L
eT’S begin with the
positives — because, after
reading this harrowing
book, I need them. The
author, Lemn Sissay, isa brilliant poet, the Chancellor of
Manchester University, an MBe,
an inspiring speaker, performer,
broadcaster, campaigner, teacher
— and a winner of prizes, love
and admiration.
Yet nothing can compensate for the
terrible losses that have caused this
remarkable man such sorrow and rage.
His is a story of neglect, cruelty and, of
course, immense courage.
Sissay was born in 1967 to a young
ethiopian woman in Wigan. Yemarshet
Sissay had come to study in Britain, but
found herself pregnant.
As happened to unmarried mothers in
those days, she was placed in a mother-
and-baby unit and, at two months, Sissay
was put into care. His mother refused to
sign adoption papers — she wanted her
son back when she could manage better.
But it was never to happen.
Her baby was renamed Norman by his
social worker (who happened also to be
called Norman) and he was handed to
‘long-term foster parents’ who were
advised to treat it as adoption.
Sissay has described them as ‘good
people who did bad things’.
Catherine and David Greenwood were a
white, working-class couple who had done
well — and were devout in their Baptist
faith. He was a teacher, she a nurse.
Sissay says: ‘My foster parents told me
some years later that I was alone in the
hospital because no one would adopt a
“coloured” baby. They said they chose me
after praying to God and that my mother
didn’t want me.’
U
NTrUTHS such as this
form the framework of this
heartbreaking, angry-making
memoir. In a sense, it presents
us with two stories: the one that Norman
Greenwood was told as he was growing
up; and then the story of little lost Lemn
Sissay, as it is revealed to the reader
through the dishonest, sterile, uncaring
language of the bureaucracy that had a
duty of care to this vulnerable child.
In 2015, after a 30-year campaign to
obtain his official records, he succeeded
MEMOIR
BEL MOONEY
MY NAME IS WHY
by Lemn Sissay
(Canongate £16.99, 208 pp)
The ‘care’system
that stole
me from
my mother
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VOUCHER: PAGE 62Acclaimed poet
Lemn Sissay’s
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