My Name Is Why

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Let’s dive into this, starting with why you would hear your name. Your Name Is A Big Part of Your Identity How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how. I have never read a memoir like it. A blistering account of a young life in the hands of neglectful authorities. It's a quest for understanding, for home, for answers. Grips like a thriller. Astounding" (MATT HAIG) As the 1970s become the 80s, one can see the effects of social change as a greater proportion of the professionals dealing with the young Lemn Sissay are kind people who treat the young man as an individual, and understand his personality and cultural interests (albeit these workers are all still white). But there remain an old guard of ageing, often male staff who are responsible for regimes that are unpleasant and unnecessarily restrictive to various extents. I hope the book club questions above help you get more out of your book club discussions. Here are some other resources to make your next book club meeting more fun.

Unfortunately, this was quite a tedious read. I really did not like the way Sissay decided to format the book, with most of the narrative being told in social work/government entries, with little-to-no exposition made on Sissay's part; almost like inserting a quote in an essay and that being the sentence, with no analysis.When you ask for Archangel Michael's assistance with this, or you can ask your guardian angels, Yeshua, or whoever you feel comfortable with… Then feel their presence enter in as your space is cleansed and filled with love, light, and peace. My Name Is Why, autobiography of his early life, with observations on the British care system. Canongate Books, 2019. ISBN 978-1-78689-234-8 Also my most triumphant: 2017 at the Royal Court. Julie Hesmondhalgh reads my psychologist’s report over two hours. Every excruciating intimate word of it. Extreme verbatim theatre. One night only. If you tune into the presence of something in your space but it feels negative, heavy, strange, or honestly, if you get freaked out or scared, call in Archangel Michael to surround you with light, to protect you, and to release any negative beings, attachments, or earthbound energies into the light.

Sissay will read from his powerful 2019 memoir, My Name is Why, before taking questions from the audience. The memoir is a reflection on identity and childhood, which chronicles his experiences growing up in foster care and children’s homes, as well as the first 18 years of his life. In December 2020, he was featured walking in Dentdale towards England's highest railway station, in the Winter Walks series on BBC Four. [31] You can ask other members their thoughts on the passage as one of your discussion questions. Set expectations and some ground rules I think that it's a great choice of format to include long excerpts and notes from social services casenotes, with commentary, to show different sides of what went on, and also, for readers who work in allied fields, to be reminded so vividly of how there are other powerful and valid perspectives on what they observe. It could also feel like a hand-hold for other people who need to face potentially frightening and retraumatising official records about themselves, to see how one man has reclaimed his story from his. And for others who were in the same residential homes as Sissay, especially the sadistic Wood End, there is the vindication that the public has heard, through such an eloquent and respected voice, what sort of conditions they endured. I'm known in Ethiopia. I'm known to my people and I want them to know what happened to me. There are many ideas of what happened to me. This is the truth of the story. I wouldn't have to know how a child could be stolen from a country, stolen from a people, and I want them to see how it was done and see the evidence. Ethiopia was never colonized. It doesn't make it a better country than a country that was colonized, but I want to show them how deeply one of their own was affected and stolen.Refugee Boy, Bloomsbury stage adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah's novel Refugee Boy, 2013. ISBN 978-1-47250-645-0

So if you hear your name being called, the most common metaphysical reason for this is that a spiritual being such as a loved one in spirit, a guide, angel, or even your higher self wants your attention.When I left the children’s home at 18, there were two things I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Write poetry and find my family. I knew that I could use the attention my poetry received to help me do that. I knew that my story was something that people would want to know more about, and that would help me, too. It's evidence. My friend, Tishani Doshi, is a novelist from India and she has a poem called Girls Are Coming Out Of The Woods. It's metaphorical, as well as being an actual truth. We are in the days of WikiLeaks, there are more words passing between more people now than since the beginning of time. Information is starting to pour out. The past is not what they said it was. We need to find the evidence and out it because the evidence of what happened in the past has been controlled. Network adapter turned off/disabled: The Wi-Fi connection problem isn't always caused by the router; your device could be the culprit. If a restart doesn't help, your network adapter could be disabled, or its drivers may need updating. When someone calls your name, you can't help but turn and look and sees who's there. This is the reason why spiritual beings would use your name to call you too. In My Name is Why, Lemn Sissay recounts his story of how he spent his childhood and teenage years living with a foster family before being transferred from one care home to another, as well as the cruelty of the social care system in Britain. Lemn's life story is told via official social records alongside his own personal memories of his experience in care. It wasn't until the age of seventeen that Lemn was finally able to see his own birth certificate and ultimately, this led to him finding out that his name was not actually 'Norman Greenwood' as he had been called for the first two decades of his life, it was actually 'Lemn Sissay'. He also found out that as a baby, he had been taken away from his Ethiopian mother and put into care. Despite multiple tries from his birth mother to reclaim her son, the British social care system denied her and instead, forced him to stay with his foster family.

I like the idea of generic questions that can be used with all books and seem to get the conversation going. Reply Lemn Sissay’s extraordinary and distressing story of his life in a foster home and then in local authority care is brought vividly alive by his extensive use of the original documents recording exactly what happened to him - documents that he was only recently given access to. Lemn, Sissay (30 October 2012). "When I left care they said I was a great survivor". The Guardian . Retrieved 3 April 2013. The final stop on his tour of care facilities – Wood End assessment centre – was more akin to a detention centre than a home, and the children who were placed there were subjected to appalling abuse at the hands of the staff (Sissay includes correspondence from others who experienced Wood End exactly as he did). It is no surprise that Sissay petitioned the Authority to move into his own flat before the age of 18. When he was finally allowed to leave, he writes, “I felt the files closing behind me,” and then, “File is an anagram of life.” This is a deeply moving memoir that speaks with incredible poeticism. A staggering exposé of colonial theft and abandonment, this book is grippingly heartbreaking" (DAVID LAMMY)

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Forgiveness is empowering. It gives you the power to not make dark events the central narrative of your life. I forgave my foster parents. I forgave my mother. It’s just a sad story. Most people in it didn’t mean to cause the harm they did. Forgiveness is you having the power to say: “It’s OK.” Troubleshoot your wireless connection. Before you begin trying to fix your Wi-Fi, make sure there is no problem with the device you are trying to connect. a b Presenter: Kirsty Young; Interviewed guest: Lemn Sissay; Producer: Cathy Drysdale (11 October 2015). "Lemn Sissay". Desert Island Discs. 24:15 minutes in. BBC. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 13 October 2017.