Thanks to Cannongate and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Jan 26 2021

During summer of 2018, I worked with a foster care agency in Philadelphia, reading through case file after case file, calling guardian after guardian to remind them of upcoming doctors and dentist visits, filling hours in the dusty, moldy quiet offices in the middle of the summer heat. All of this to say that the pain and institutionalized tragedy in Lemn Sissay's "My Name Is Why" is unsurprising and yet emotionally touching. Interspersed with poetry, documentation and narrative, Sissy paints a portrait of growing up as an unwitting Ethiopian adoptee in a primarily white community.

Reading the social worker's reports feels oddly like deja-vu. When Sissay plainly states that "care workers are the most institutionalized", he struck a chord. It is often the agents of the state, the ones who think that they are out to change the system, that become most enamored with the mechanics of their system, unable to see its flaws or perhaps unwilling to change it. Like Sissay, many foster children internalize guilt and long for freedom. Unlike Sissay, most don't find the communities they belong to in the end. Haunting, evocative and education, Sissay's memorial should be read nationwide.