My Name Is Why

Product Information

When we discuss fiction with our friends, we not only immerse ourselves deeper in the story, we learn a lot about our friends. Here are some questions to help facilitate that experience. What are your thoughts about the (now banned) common practice of people in the West, adopting Ethiopian children? Since you’ve landed here in search of good book discussion questions, chances are that you’re about to host book club. If this is your first time leading the group, here are some tips to help you guide the discussion. Prepare in advance 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. I do... to this day, think that success is being able to look in the mirror and know that I'm alright on that day. I don't believe I've made it–I believe that I'm making it. I believe that I've found my past so that I can live in the present, it's the most important thing to me. The books and the plays and the touring and the gigs and the speeches and the cash...it all pales into insignificance when compared with knowing that I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm going to be okay now."

In January 2016, Sissay wrote an article in The Guardian about the Foundling Museum's "Drawing on Childhood" exhibition in which he noted: "How a society treats those children who have no one to look after them is a measure of how civilised it is. It is scandalous that a prime minister should have to admit, as David Cameron did last autumn, that the care system 'shames our country' and that Ofsted should report that there are more councils judged as 'inadequate' than 'good' for their children’s services." [20] Later that year, Sissay became the patron of theatre company 20 Stories High, based in Toxteth, Liverpool, which creates diverse theatre including beatboxing, singing, puppetry and other media. In October of the same year, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the series Lemn Sissay's Origin Stories, in which he discussed his life; it was rebroadcast a year later. [21] My Name is Why is, itself, strong evidence of an individual who does not own their personal history. If one discounts the reports included in the book, Sissay’s narrative feels threadbare and perplexing – his internal monologue not tallying with the external world he experiences. That these reports have only recently been released to Sissay should emphasise how impossible a task it was for a young man to reconcile his interior and exterior life when he was given none of the insight the adults around him purported to have (until 16, he didn’t even know that Norman Greenwood was not his real name!). There were two sort of child-inmates: young people on remand (awaiting court appearances) and young people in care. It was a technical difference because we were all treated like charged criminals. I was under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. {...} Anyone who stepped out of line was beaten. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. 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 Times)

"We are at a time now where we can address some of the crazy hallucinations of history which have been set upon the world through colonialist actions"

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. This is Lemn’s story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. 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) If the story could be told by one of the other character’s, which character’s perspective would you prefer to hear? Why? 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.”

Something Dark by Lemn Sissay". British Council. Archived from the original on 5 May 2013 . Retrieved 3 April 2013. Sissay only managed to get hold of file from social services in Wigan n 2015, after thirty years of asking. He used what was in his file to help tell his story and there are extensive quotes from it in the book. Sissay also intersperses the book with poetry:

My mother just came to [England] and found herself pregnant and I was stolen from her. In Ethiopia right now they do not allow international adoptions to happen anymore. There is no land grab in Ethiopia for children, it has stopped because it became so vile, so offensive and ugly. Hotels would be filled with desperate [western] couples taking children, with parents in Ethiopia thinking that their children would be returning to them one day. The Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed is himself an adopting parent. When the leader of a country both stops international adoption and adopts himself, you know that you're in good hands and you know that the administration is seeing something ugly. Lemn gives us a harrowing account of how his childhood was impacted by the multitude of failures and neglect by people in a position of authority and trust with a duty of care. The memoir details the ways in which his mother was lied to by the authorities and denied the right to her child and the subsequent challenges Lemn faced as a result. Auditory memory is one of your brain’s processes to take in information that you hear (sound, voice, audio), and store that information until the next time you recall it. People that can listen to a song, and figure out how to play it on a guitar without knowing the chords have an excellent auditory memory. Animals, such as parrots know how to say “hello!” and mimic different sounds and noises because of their strong auditory memory. Connect with your central column of light and allow your mind to relax and your heart to open. Just observe and with practice, more guidance, inspiration, insight, messages from spirit can flow through to greet you because when a spirit is calling your name that is a sign that there's more. And the fact that you heard your name means that you have the ability to hear and receive deeper guidance. Receive Guidance: An Internal Experience Foundling Fellows: Past Foundling Fellows: 2014: Coram Fellow". foundlingmuseum.org.uk. Foundling Museum . Retrieved 2 November 2017.

Lemn Sissay installed as University of Manchester Chancellor". University of Manchester. 14 October 2015 . Retrieved 19 September 2016. It’s difficult to remember where exactly these symbols go within the name. Although it can be difficult to avoid if other usernames are taken, users find it difficult to remember these exact punctuations and your account can get lost in the masses. Choose subsequent questions based on how the discussion flows. If a question lands flat or causes too much of a stir, move the group in a completely different direction. Or, if the discussion is positive and lively, continue on with related questions. Be a proactive moderator 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. 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.

More from Community Care

This memoir details Lemn Sissay’s years from his first foster family, then being moved around to different homes. On the way he tries to discover his identity. Name changes, parentage and roots all feature in the book and lemn Sissay’s mission is to uncover all the secrets that the government had hidden from him. This receptive state happens frequently as you're drifting off to sleep and right when you wake up in the morning. Again, this is the hypnogogic state, and when you're in it, your ego mind is much quieter and more receptive to allowing messages from Spirit to flow through to you that would normally be filtered out. A part of what your ego mind does is focus your awareness in the physical plane, but when your ego is half asleep, the higher spiritual realms have a way of flowing through to you.