14 feb 2021

"My Name Is Why": quando l'adozione fallisce...


Read it in English
Affascinata dalla storia personale di Lemn Sissay, ho deciso, mentre leggevo la sua raccolta di poesie, di ordinare anche l’autobiografia, appena uscita. Ero rimasta molto colpita dal modo in cui parlava di sè nel TED Talk e volevo leggere la sua versione dei fatti. 
L’ho letto tutto d’un fiato… in due giorni… non riuscivo a metterlo giù. Come immaginavo, Sissay da grande affabulatore qual è riesce a farti immedesimare subito facendo leva, almeno nel mio caso, sulla pietas umana, tocca quelle corde recondite che tutti noi abbiamo… la paura dell’abbandono, di rimanere soli…

La qualità maggiore di questo libro è quella di saper trasmettere le emozioni, le sensazioni provate da bambino. La lucidità con cui analizza ogni singolo evento ed ogni singolo ricordo e le sensazioni ad esso collegato è incredibile. 

Ho anche molto apprezzato la scelta di intervallare il racconto con i documenti e i rapporti ufficiali che si trovavano nel suo fascicolo personale e ai quali ha avuto accesso dopo molte traversie. Ma, soprattutto, ho apprezzato le parole che usa per descrivere l’abisso emozionale in cui l’hanno costretto… come se non ci fosse altro modo per dirlo… eppure nessuno l’aveva detto prima così. La persecuzione delle istituzioni, perpetrata attraverso le continue e oppressive burocrazie: 

“The Authority had been writing reports about me from the day I was born. My first footsteps were followed by the click clack clack of a typewriter.” “After eighteen years of experimentation The Authority threw me out. It locked the doors securely behind me and hid the files.” “Eighteen years of records written by strangers.”

Tutto è cominciato in Inghilterra nel lontano 1967 con una giovane etiope in stato interessante e una istituzione dell’epoca che Sissay descrive magistralmente con una metafora alimentare, le “baby farms”: 

“The mothers were the earth and the children were the crops. The church and state were the farmers and the adopting parents were the consumers.”

Esattamente come un prodotto da supermercato, il piccolo Lemn viene ‘comperato’ dalla famiglia Greenwood, dove trascorre quasi 12 anni della sua vita finchè quello che sembrava essere stato un grande atto di generosità in realtà si rivela per quello che era sempre stato: un atto di egoismo e (grande) ipocrisia. Il bimbo non soddisfa più i genitori adottivi che, nel frattempo, hanno avuto i bravi bimbi bianchi che avevano sempre desiderato e non concepiscono il sacrificio che un figlio comporta. Appena le cose si fanno poco più complicate del previsto, annaspano… fino all’atto discutibile di restituire ‘il pacchetto’. Ma quello che è davvero abominevole è l’aver anche cercato di far ricadere la colpa sul bambino e, soprattutto, convincere il bambino stesso di questo. Ecco… questo è imperdonabile.

Il baratro… 

“This was the beginning of the end of open arms and warm hugs. This was the beginning of empty christmas time and hollow birthdays. This was the beginning of not being touched.

Cosa può esserci di più crudele dell’essere rifiutato? L’essere ignorato… sicuramente. E infatti:

“This is how you become invisible. It isn’t the lack of photographs that erodes your memory. It is the underlying unkindness, which makes you feel as though you don’t matter enough. This is how to quickly deplete the sense of self-worth deep inside a child’s psyche. This is how a child becomes hidden in plain sight."

L’istituzionalizzazione, ovvero essere circondati da persone che stanno solo facendo un lavoro e non hanno un reale interesse per te e per le tue sorti...e soprattutto non avere sempre le stesse intorno… di modo che alla fine nessuno ha modo davvero di affezionarsi o provare empatia in qualche modo per te e la tua situazione… a volte perchè i dipendenti pubblici cambiano orari, turni, mansioni, lavoro… e a volte è il ragazzino stesso che viene spostato in altre strutture. 

“Children were moved haphazardly from home to home as objects of low emotional currency. Damaged goods. It was nothing personal."

Ovviamente, mano a mano che cresce e che la sua angoscia interiore peggiora, le strutture peggiorano con essa, fino ad arrivare al carcere minorile, dove davvero le sofferenze e i maltrattamenti diventano fisici oltre che psicologici.

“Wood End was a nightmare of unimaginable proportions, and it caused nightmares."

La fortuna di Lemn è stata quella di scrivere poesie e riuscire in qualche misterioso e magico modo a veicolare parte della sua angoscia nella scrittura. E… attraverso la poesia e la musica, avvicinarsi al movimento rastafariano e ad associazioni per i diritti dei minori.

L'unica scintilla di umanità in quel calvario la si può trovare nei rapporti scritti da un assistente sociale che ha seguito il caso per un lungo periodo: sembra l’unico essere umano ad essersi interessato veramente al bene del ragazzino e ad aver cercato di capirne le motivazioni e le emozioni: Norman Mills… grazie al quale ha i primi contatti che lo porteranno a ritrovare, molto tempo dopo, la sua vera madre e scoprire che in realtà non l’aveva mai abbandonato… a differenza della famiglia inglese adottiva. 

La storia personale di Lemn Sissay improvvisamente assurge a parabola grazie all'intensità delle due facciate in cui descrive il momento in cui scopre la sua storia originale e i documenti con il suo vero nome: WHY.

L’unica cosa che mi è dispiaciuta, alla fine del libro, è di non sapere che fine ha fatto Norman Mills e se Sissay ha in qualche modo riconosciuto a questo impiegato statale gli sforzi che ha fatto per cercare di proteggerlo all’interno del ginepraio con i pochi mezzi che aveva a sua disposizione: una macchina da scrivere ed una scheda per i rapporti.

Adesso capisco l’impegno che Sissay mette nel sostenere la causa dei bambini adottati e nel denunciare le condizioni delle case famiglia e delle strutture pubbliche che si occupano di minori.




MY NAME IS WHY: WHEN ADOPTION FAILS

While I was reading Mr Sissay's collection of poems, I grew interested in his story and decided to buy his autobiography, which had just been published. I was moved by his words in the TED Talk and wanted to read the whole story from his point of view. Well… the result is that I've read it in two days… I simply couldn't stop reading. Lemn Sissay is a great storyteller and you soon sympathize with him… it’s moving because it touches the untold strings of all human beings… fear of abandonment, of being alone, of not to be loved.

The most notable quality of this book is transmitting emotions, in particular the feelings he felt as a child. The clarity of his analysis of the events and his memories convey deep feelings and are truly moving.

I also appreciated the idea of interspersing the story with documents and official reports found in his personal files, files he was finally able to read after many difficulties. 

Above all, I appreciated the words he uses to describe the emotional abyss where he was forced… 

Bureaucracy followed him everywhere… it was almost a persecution: “The Authority had been writing reports about me from the day I was born. My first footsteps were followed by the click clack clack of a typewriter.” “After eighteen years of experimentation The Authority threw me out. It locked the doors securely behind me and hid the files.” “Eighteen years of records written by strangers”

Everything starts with a young Ethiopian woman who gets pregnant while in England back in 1967 and ends up in a typical institution of the time that Sissay describes using a food metaphor, the ‘baby farms’: “The mothers were the earth and the children were the crops. The church and state were the farmers and the adopting èarents were the consumers.”

Little Lemn was bought by the Greenwood family… like a product  at the supermarket… and he spent almost 12 years of his life with them. Until what seemed an act of love and generosity reveals itself as an act of selfishness and (big) hypocrisy. As soon as the child didn't meet the parents' expectations… he became a problem. And as The foster parents had had their own good white children in the meantime….the 'product' was suddenly returned to the 'seller'. The most abominable thing in all that is trying to make it seem the child's fault and, above all, convince the child. No way…

Emotional ruin follows: “This was the beginning of the end of open arms and warm hugs. This was the beginning of empty christmas time and hollow birthdays. This was the beginning of not being touched.”

Is there anything worse than being rejected? Well, being ignored. “This is how you become invisible. It isn’t the lack of photographs that erodes your memory. It is the underlying unkindness, which makes you feel as though you don’t matter enough. This is how to quickly deplete the sense of self-worth deep inside a child’s psyche. This is how a child becomes hidden in plain sight.”

Institutionalisation.... having people around you who are only doing their job but don’t care for you and are not really interested in your fate… worse than that when the people around you are always different… so, in the end, no one can feel affection for you or a little empathy or know your situation at all. Civil servants have different working hours and duties and “children were moved haphazardly from home to home as objects of low emotional currency. Damaged goods. It was nothing personal.”

As he grew, his interior anguish grows with him and the homes get worse and worse… until he reaches juvenile hall, where suffering and mistreatment become physical. “Wood End was a nightmare of unimaginable proportions, and it caused nightmares.”

Lemn was lucky enough to write poems and be able to channel his anguish in writing. And… through poems and music, he approached the rastafarian movement together with children’s rights’ associations and human rights in general.

A little spark of humanity followed him for a while, and we can find it in the reports written by a social worker who was on his case… this seems the only human being who was really interested in the sake of the child and tried to understand his motivations and his feelings: Norman Mills. He gave him the first contacts that helped Lemn find, much later, his true mother and discover that she had never abandoned him… unlike the British foster family who had adopted him. The most intense part of the book is when he finally finds out about his origins and the documents with his real name.

At the end of the book I was truly sorry not to know what happened to Norman Mills and if Sissay has somehow acknowledged him the efforts he had made trying to protect that child with the few means he had… a typewriter and a report sheet.

I have the greatest admiration for this man who could catch and channel his emotions on a page. I also appreciate and better understand now his commitment to support the cause of adopted children and condemn the conditions of foster homes and public structures.


Download the posts on Lemn Sissay as eMAGAZINE


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