Lemn Sissay: A child of the state

76,184 views ・ 2012-10-24

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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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Having spent 18 years as a child of the state
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in children's homes and foster care,
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you could say that I'm an expert on the subject,
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and in being an expert, I want to let you know that
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being an expert does in no way make you right
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in light of the truth.
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If you're in care, legally the government is your
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parent, loco parentis.
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Margaret Thatcher was my mother. (Laughter)
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Let's not talk about breastfeeding. (Laughter)
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Harry Potter was a foster child.
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Pip from "Great Expectations" was adopted;
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Superman was a foster child;
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Cinderella was a foster child;
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Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo,
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was fostered and institutionalized;
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Batman was orphaned;
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Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights"
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was fostered;
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Jane Eyre, adopted;
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Roald Dahl's James from "James and the Giant Peach;"
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Matilda; Moses -- Moses! (Laughter)
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Moses! (Laughter) --
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the boys in Michael Morpurgo's "Friend or Foe;"
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Alem in Benjamin Zephaniah's "Refugee Boy;"
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Luke Skywalker --
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Luke Skywalker! (Laughter) --
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Oliver Twist;
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Cassia in "The Concubine of Shanghai" by Hong Ying;
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Celie in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."
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All of these great fictional characters, all of them
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who were hurt by their condition,
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all of them who spawned thousands of other books
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and other films, all of them
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were fostered, adopted or orphaned.
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It seems that writers know that the child
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outside of family reflects on what family truly is
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more than what it promotes itself to be.
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That is, they also use extraordinary skills
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to deal with extraordinary situations on a daily basis.
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How have we not made the connection?
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And why have we not made the connection, between
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— How has that happened? —
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between these incredible characters of popular culture
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and religions, and the fostered, adopted or orphaned child
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in our midst? It's not our pity that they need.
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It's our respect.
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I know famous musicians,
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I know actors and film stars and millionaires and novelists
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and top lawyers and television executives
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and magazine editors and national journalists
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and dustbinmen and hairdressers, all who were
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looked after children, fostered, adopted or orphaned,
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and many of them grow into their adult lives
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in fear of speaking of their background, as if it may
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somehow weaken their standing in the foreground,
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as if it were somehow Kryptonite, as if it were a time bomb
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strapped on the inside. Children in care,
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who've had a life in care, deserve the right
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to own and live the memory of their own childhood.
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It is that simple.
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My own mother — and I should say this here —
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she same to this country in the late '60s,
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and she was, you know, she found herself pregnant,
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as women did in the late '60s. You know what I mean?
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They found themselves pregnant.
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And she sort of, she had no idea of the context
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in which she'd landed.
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In the 1960s -- I should give you some context -- in the 1960s,
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if you were pregnant and you were single,
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you were seen as a threat to the community.
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You were separated from your family by the state.
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You were separated from your family and placed into
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mother and baby homes.
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You were appointed a social worker.
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The adoptive parents were lined up.
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It was the primary purpose of the social worker, the aim,
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to get the woman at her most vulnerable time
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in her entire life, to sign the adoption papers.
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So the adoption papers were signed.
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The mother and baby's homes were often run by nuns.
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The adoption papers were signed,
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the child was given to the adoptive parents, and the mother
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shipped back to her community
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to say that she'd been on a little break.
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A little break.
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A little break.
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The first secret of shame for a woman
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for being a woman, "a little break."
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The adoption process took, like, a matter of months,
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so it was a closed shop, you know, sealed deal,
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an industrious, utilitarian solution:
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the government, the farmer,
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the adopting parents, the consumer,
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the mother, the earth, and the child, the crop.
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It's kind of easy to patronize the past,
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to forego our responsibilities in the present.
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What happened then is a direct reflection
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of what is happening now. Everybody believed themselves
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to be doing the right thing by God and by the state
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for the big society, fast-tracking adoption.
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So anyway, she comes here, 1967, she's pregnant,
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and she comes from Ethiopia that was celebrating
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its own jubilee at the time
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under the Emperor Haile Selassie,
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and she lands months before the Enoch Powell speech,
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the "Rivers of Blood" speech.
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She lands months before the Beatles release "The White Album,"
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months before Martin Luther King was killed.
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It was a summer of love if you were white.
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If you were black, it was a summer of hate.
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So she goes from Oxford, she's sent to the north of England
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to a mother and baby home, and appointed a social worker.
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It's her plan. You know, I have to say this in the Houses --
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It's her plan to have me fostered for a short period of time
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while she studies. But the social worker,
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he had a different agenda.
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He found the foster parents, and he said to them,
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"Treat this as an adoption. He's yours forever.
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His name is Norman." (Laughter)
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Norman! (Laughter)
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Norman!
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So they took me. I was a message, they said.
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I was a sign from God, they said.
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I was Norman Mark Greenwood.
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Now, for the next 11 years, all I know is that this woman,
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this birth woman, should have her eyes scratched out
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for not signing the adoption papers. She was an evil woman
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too selfish to sign, so I spent those 11 years
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kneeling and praying.
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I tried praying. I swear I tried praying.
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"God, can I have a bike for Christmas?"
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But I would always answer myself, "Yes, of course you can."
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(Laughter)
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And then I was supposed to determine whether that
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was the voice of God or it was the voice of the Devil.
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And it turns out I've got the Devil inside of me.
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Who knew? (Laughter)
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So anyway, two years sort of passed,
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and they had a child of their own,
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and then another two years passed, and they had another child of their own,
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and then another time passed
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and they had another child that they called an accident,
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which I thought was an unusual name. (Laughter)
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And I was on the cusp of, sort of, adolescence,
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so I was starting to take biscuits from the tin without asking.
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I was starting to stay out a little bit late, etc., etc.
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Now, in their religiosity, in their naivete,
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my mom and dad, which I believed them to be forever,
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as they said they were, my mom and dad
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conceived that I had the Devil inside of me.
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And what -- I should say this here, because this is how
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they engineered my leaving.
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They sat me at a table, my foster mom, and she said to me,
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"You don't love us, do you?" At 11 years old.
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They've had three other children. I'm the fourth. The third was an accident.
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And I said, "Yeah, of course I do." Because you do.
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My foster mother asked me to go away to think about love
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and what it is and to read the Scriptures and to come back tomorrow
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and give my most honest and truthful answer.
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So this was an opportunity. If they were asking me
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whether I loved them or not, then I mustn't love them,
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which led me to the miracle of thought that I thought they wanted me to get to.
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"I will ask God for forgiveness and His light will shine
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through me to them. How fantastic." This was an opportunity.
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The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable,
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and the answer as honest as a sinner could get.
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"I mustn't love you," I said to them. "But I will ask God for forgiveness."
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"Because you don't love us, Norman,
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clearly you've chosen your path."
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Twenty-four hours later, my social worker,
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this strange man who used to visit me every couple of months,
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he's waiting for me in the car as I say goodbye to my parents.
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I didn't say goodbye to anybody, not my mother, my father,
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my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles,
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my cousins, my grandparents, nobody.
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On the way to the children's home, I started to ask myself,
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"What's happened to me?"
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It's not that I'd had the rug pulled from beneath me
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as much as the entire floor had been taken away.
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When I got to the —
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For the next four, five years,
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I was held in four different children's homes.
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On the third children's home, at 15,
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I started to rebel, and what I did was,
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I got three tins of paint, Airfix paint that you use for models,
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and I was -- it was a big children's home, big Victorian children's home --
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and I was in a little turret at the top of it,
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and I poured them, red, yellow and green,
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the colors of Africa, down the tiles.
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You couldn't see it from the street, because the home
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was surrounded by beech trees.
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For doing this, I was incarcerated for a year
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in an assessment center which was actually
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a remand center. It was a virtual prison
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for young people.
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By the way, years later, my social worker said
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that I should never have been put in there.
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I wasn't charged for anything. I hadn't done anything wrong.
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But because I had no family to inquire about me,
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they could do anything to me.
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I'm 17 years old, and
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they had a padded cell.
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They would march me down corridors in last-size order.
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They -- I was put in a dormitory
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with a confirmed Nazi sympathizer.
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All of the staff were ex-police -- interesting --
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and ex-probation officers.
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The man who ran it was an ex-army officer.
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Every time I had a visit by a person who I did not know
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who would feed me grapes, once every three months,
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I was strip-searched.
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That home was full of young boys who were on remand
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for things like murder.
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And this was the preparation that I was being given
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after 17 years as a child of the state.
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I have to tell this story.
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I have to tell it, because there was no one
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to put two and two together.
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I slowly became aware that I knew nobody
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that knew me for longer than a year.
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See, that's what family does.
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It gives you reference points.
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I'm not defining a good family from a bad family.
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I'm just saying that you know when your birthday is
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by virtue of the fact that somebody tells you when your birthday is,
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a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle,
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a cousin, a grandparent. It matters to someone,
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and therefore it matters to you. Understand,
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I was 14 years old, tucked away in myself, into myself,
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and I wasn't touched either, physically touched.
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I'm reporting back. I'm reporting back simply to say that
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when I left the children's home I had two things
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that I wanted to do. One was to find my family,
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and the other was to write poetry.
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In creativity I saw light.
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In the imagination I saw the endless possibility of life,
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the endless truth, the permanent creation of reality,
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the place where anger was an expression
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in the search for love, a place where dysfunction
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is a true reaction to untruth.
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I've just got to say it to you all: I found all of my family
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in my adult life. I spent all of my adult life finding them,
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and I've now got a fully dysfunctional family just like everybody else.
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But I'm reporting back to you to say quite simply
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that you can define how strong a democracy is
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by how its government treats its child.
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I don't mean children. I mean the child of the state.
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Thanks very much. It's been an honor. (Applause)
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(Applause)
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