My Name Is Why (eBook)

Lemn Sissay is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning writer and broadcaster. He has authored collections of poetry and plays. His Landmark poems are visible in London, Manchester, Huddersfield and Addis Ababa. He has been made an Honorary Doctor by the universities of Manchester, Kent, Huddersfield and Brunel. Sissay was awarded an MBE for services to literature and in 2019 he was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize. He is Chancellor of the University of Manchester. He is British and Ethiopian. @lemnsissay | lemnsissay.com

A fascinating memoir . . . So powerful

The engaging transfiguring truth of My Name Is Why is like a baptism of truth - leaving you washed clean of lies and reborn in love. Profound in its kindness, intelligence and unselfish heart, this book is important and unputdownable

Utterly devastating and beautiful . . . Breathtakingly written

An extraordinary story

Searing . . . Unputdownable . . . My Name Is Why is authentic and beautiful, a potential game-changer in public attitudes to children raised in care. It's about bureaucratic cruelty and what happens when love is absent. Don't miss it

The most amazing thing about this book is that it's not made up. This actually happened. It is an incredible story

This is a deeply moving memoir that speaks with incredible poeticism. A staggering expos� of colonial theft and abandonment, this book is grippingly heartbreaking

A lyrical, painful and yet hope-filled memoir . . . Shattering, light-searching

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

The great triumph of this work comes from its author's determination to rail against what he rightly diagnoses as this institutionally endorsed disremembering of black and marginalised experience. It is a searing and unforgettable re-creation of the most brutal of beginnings