Lemn Sissay’s struggle to piece together the story of his life is inspiring – Dr Gary Clapton

By Dr Gary Clapton
Published 20th Dec 2019, 06:01 BST
This is a time for recommending books for gifts and whilst there are many books on growing up fostered and adopted, there are few that reach a mainstream audience.

Jacqueline Wilson’s Tracy ­Beaker series is one that is the exception and remains popular, especially with teenage girls. Wilson’s Tracy Beaker has now grown up and started a ­family of her own and I guess that her fanbase will stay loyal. The series was fiction and this is often the best way to get over powerful messages about life in care.

However, a new book is fact-based and hard-hitting but also makes for gripping reading about life in care. My Name Is Why is written by Lemn ­Sissay, a British author and broadcaster. Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, and he has been publishing poetry since he was 21 in 1988. His life story is gripping.

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Sissay’s mother is Ethiopian and give birth to him in Billinge Hospital, near Wigan, Lancashire, in 1967.

He got his first name, Norman, from that of his mother’s social worker who had found foster parents for him while his mother returned to ­Bracknell to finish her studies. His mother was in her teens and had hoped to return to claim him and so refused to sign adoption papers.

However, Sissay remained in foster care until he was 12. Then his foster parents (who by then had had three children of their own), placed him in a children’s home. For the next six years Sissay was moved around four children homes. He grew up as the only black boy in the village where his foster parents lived and strangers spat on him from buses. In the care homes he was named Chalky White. Whilst in care Sissay was always told his mother had abandoned him.