I just find them to be some of the most interesting people I've ever met. And, yeah, maybe talk a little bit about what that experience is like for her. But despite the extraordinary opportunity, she talked often about just wanting to go home as troublesome as that home life was. Where is Dasani now? It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. She will kick them awake. This is typical of Dasani. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. I have a lot of things to say: one girls life growing up homeless in It's called Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. And I found greater clarity after I left the newsroom and was more in an academic setting as I was researching this book. I read the book out to the girls. Putting a face on homelessness in 'Invisible Child' | CNN Elliott says she was immediately drawn to 11-year-old Dasani not only because of the girls ability to articulate injustices in her life, but how Desani held so much promise for herself. About six months after the series ran, we're talking June of 2014, Dasani by then had missed 52 days of the school year, which was typical, 'cause chronic absenteeism is very, very normal among homeless children. More often she is running to the monkey bars, to the library, to the A train that her grandmother cleaned for a living. But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. And just exposure to diversity is great for anyone. So she knows what it's like to suddenly be the subject of a lot of people's attention. Chapter 42 Now a sophomore, Dasani believes that her family is desperately fractured. Dasani's family of ten lives in one room of the Auburn Family Residence, a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Andrea, thank you so much. And her first thought was, "Who would ever pay for water?" Clothing donations. And it's the richest private school in America. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American And for most of us, I would say, family is so important. And obviously, you know, one of the things I think is interesting and comes through here is, and I don't know the data on this, but I have found in my life as a reporter and as a human being along various parts of the Titanic ship that is the United States of America that there's a lot of substance abuse at every level. And there's a amazing, amazing book called Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc which takes place in the Bronx, which is in a somewhat similar genre. She counts her siblings in pairs, just like her mother said. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and seven siblings in one of New York City's I think it's so natural for an outsider to be shocked by the kind of conditions that Dasani was living in. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. If you use the word homeless, usually the image that comes to mind is of a panhandler or someone sleeping on subway grates. ", I think if we look at Dasani's trajectory, we see a different kind of story. Invisible Child We see a story of a girl who's trying to not escape, she says. She says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. To know Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates to follow this childs life, from her first breaths in a Brooklyn hospital to the bloom of adulthood is to reckon with the story of New York City and, beyond its borders, with America itself. The light noises bring no harm the colicky cries of an infant down the hall, the hungry barks of the Puerto Rican ladys chihuahuas, the addicts who wander the projects, hitting some crazy high. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and It's massively oversubscribed. I would be off in the woods somewhere writing and I would call her. You're not supposed to be watching movies. Invisible Child Summary - eNotes.com She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. This was north of Fort Greene park. She doesn't want to get out. Nope.. First of all, Dasani landed there in 2010 because her family had been forced out of their section eight rental in Staten Island. Her husband also had a drug history. WebPULITZER PRIZE WINNER NATIONAL BESTSELLER A vivid and devastating (The New York Times) portrait of an indomitable girlfrom acclaimed journalist Andrea ElliottFrom its first indelible pages to its rich and startling conclusion, Invisible Child had me, by turns, stricken, inspired, outraged, illuminated, in tears, and hungering for But she told me, and she has told me many times since, that she loves the book. And that's very clear in the context of her parents here. And there's so much to say about it. And I don't think she could ever recover from that. She saw this ad in a glossy magazine while she was, I believe, at a medical clinic. This is where she derives her greatest strength. Her parents were in and out of jail for theft, fights and drugs. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. She's just a visitor. And it was just a constant struggle between what Dasani's burdens have imposed on her and the limitless reach of her potential if she were only unburdened. The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. She is the least of Dasanis worries. And so she wanted a strong army of siblings. And, as she put it, "It makes me feel like something's going on out there." She is sure the place is haunted. But I know that I tried very, very hard at every step to make sure it felt as authentic as possible to her, because there's a lot of descriptions of how she's thinking about things. But the spacial separation of Chicago means that they're not really cheek and jowl next to, you know, $3 million town homes or anything like that. And we can talk about that more. But to Dasani, the shelter is far more than a random assignment. Chris Hayes: Yeah. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. How did you respond? But under court supervision, he had remained with the children, staying clean while his wife entered a drug treatment programme. It wasn't a safe thing. One in five kids. And at the same time, what if these kids ten years from now regret it? Their sister is always first. Multiply her story by thousands of children in cities across the U.S. living through the same experiences and the country confronts a crisis. Legal Aid set up a trust for the family. Andrea Elliott: This is a work in progress. I didn't have a giant stack of in-depth, immersive stories to show him. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. And so I also will say that people would look at Dasani's family from the outside, her parents, and they might write them off as, you know, folks with a criminal record. She would then start to feed the baby. It's why do so many not? Thats a lot on my plate.. Sept. 28, 2021. They did not get the help that many upper middle class Americans would take for granted, whether it's therapy, whether it's medication, whether it's rehab. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. Chanel thought of Dasani. Anyway, and I said, "Imagine I'm making a movie about your life. I was around a lot of folks like Lee Ann Fujii, who passed away. Like, you do an incredible job on that. Dasani was in many ways a parent to her seven younger brothers and sisters. So she would talk about this. Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. I never stopped reporting on her life. Andrea Elliott: And I think the middle ground we found was to protect them by not putting their last names in and refer to most of them by their nicknames. And the Big Apple gets a new mayor, did get a new mayor this weekend. What's interesting about that compared to Dasani, just in terms of what, sort of, concentrated poverty is like in the 1980s, I think, when that book is being reported in her is that proximity question. Dasanis story, which ran on the front page in late 2013, became totemic in a moment of electoral flux in New York after the election of Democrat Bill de Blasio as mayor on a ANDREA ELLIOTT, It's on the west side just west of downtown. The movies." And she'd go to her window, and she talked about this a lot. Have Democrats learned them? She became the first child in her family to graduate high school and she has now entered LaGuardia Community College. They will drop to the floor in silence. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the MontanaLibrary2Go digital collection. Her siblings will soon be scrambling to get dressed and make their beds before running to the cafeteria to beat the line. Author Andrea Elliott followed Dasani and her family for nearly 10 years, She was so tender with her turtle. They have learned to sleep through anything. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. I had been there for a while. How you get out isn't the point. They loved this pen and they would grab it from me (LAUGH) and they would use it as a microphone and pretend, you know, she was on the news. You just invest time. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. She is always warming a bottle or soothing a cranky baby. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. She is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College in New York. This is usually the sound that breaks Dasanis trance, causing her to leave the window and fetch Lee-Lees bottle. Elliott She said, "Home is the people. Invisible Child Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. You know, we're very much in one another's lives. Well, if you know the poor, you know that they're working all the time. And she sees a curious thing on the shelf of her local bodega. How long is she in that shelter? And now, on this bright September morning, Dasani will take her grandmothers path once again, to the promising middle school two blocks away. In the dim chaos of Room 449, she struggles to find Lee-Lees formula, which is donated by the shelter but often expired. But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. And I was trying to get him to agree to let me in for months at a time. I think that what is so striking about the New York that she was growing up in, as compared to, for instance, the New York of her mother Chanel, also named for a bottle of liquid, (LAUGH) is that Chanel grew up in East Brooklyn at a time when this was a siloed community, much like what you are describing about Henry Horner. And he immediately got it. Nearly a quarter of her childhood has unfolded at the Auburn Family Residence, where Dasanis family a total of 10 people live in one room. She was doing so well. Chris Hayes: I want to, sort of, take a step back because I want to continue with what you talk about as, sort of, these forces and the disintegration of the family and also track through where Dasani goes from where she was when she's 11. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. 16K views, 545 likes, 471 loves, 3K comments, 251 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from EWTN: Starting at 8 a.m. Dasani If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home. She was named after the water bottle that is sold in bodegas and grocery stores. But I don't think it's enough to put all these kids through college. Her stepfather's name is Supreme. We burn them! Dasani says with none of the tenderness reserved for her turtle. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the Pioneer Library System digital collection. Then she sets about her chores, dumping the mop bucket, tidying her dresser, and wiping down the small fridge. And by the way, at that time this was one of the richest cities in the world. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. Uncovering 'The Invisible Child' with Andrea Elliott: They were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. And then I was like, "I need to hear this. Note: This is a rough transcript please excuse any typos. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. And in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." A stunning debut, the book covers eight formative years in the life of an intelligent and imaginative young girl in a Brooklyn homeless shelter as she balances poverty, family, and opportunity. A concrete walkway leads to the lobby, which Dasani likens to a jail. I want people to read the book, which is gonna do a better job of this all because it's so, sort of, like, finely crafted. And I said, "Yes." Dasani opens a heavy metal door, stepping into the dark corridor. And the translator would translate and was actually showing this fly. She held the Bible for Tish James, the incoming then-public advocate who held Dasani's fist up in the air and described her to the entire world as, "My new BFF.". Invisible Child: the Life of a Homeless Family in NYC The citys wealth has flowed to its outer edges, bringing pour-over coffee and artisanal doughnuts to places once considered gritty. And the more that readers engage with her, the clearer it becomes that every single one of these stories is worthy of attention., After nearly a decade of reporting, Elliott wants readers to remember the girl at her windowsill every morning who believed something better was out there waiting for her.. There's so much upheaval. She would help in all kinds of ways. It's in resources. And these bubbles get, sort of, smaller and smaller, in which people are increasingly removed from these different strata of American life. Try to explain your work as much as you can." In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. And unemployed. It doesn't have to be a roof over my head. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. She doesn't want to have to leave. And, actually, sometimes those stories are important because they raise alarms that are needed. Sort of, peak of the homeless crisis. Invisible Child And you didn't really have firsthand access to what it looks like, what it smells like to be wealthy. I think about it every day. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. The other thing I would say is that we love the story of the kid who made it out. Tempers explode. This is the type of fact that nobody can know. There are parts of it that are painful. But with Shaka Ritashata (PH), I remember using all of the, sort of, typical things that we say as journalists. The people I hang out with. So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. So she lived in that shelter for over three years. What was striking to me was how little changed. Thats not gonna be me, she says. Laundry piled up. But you know what a movie is. Dasani would call it my spy pen. I have a lot of possibility. We rarely look at all the children who don't, who are just as capable. She is in that shelter because of this, kind of, accumulation of, you know, small, fairly common, or banal problems of the poor that had assembled into a catastrophe, had meant not being able to stay in the section eight housing. She loves being first the first to be born, the first to go to school, the first to win a fight, the first to make the honour roll. There have been a few huge massive interventions that have really altered the picture of what poverty looks like in the U.S., chiefly the Great Society and the New Deal and some other things that have happened since then. This book is filled with twists and turns, as is her story. And I hope that she'll continue to feel that way. They cough or sometimes mutter in the throes of a dream. And I think showing the dignity within these conditions is part of that other lens. If she cries, others answer. She had seven siblings. So thats a lot on my plate with some cornbread. Only together have they learned to navigate povertys systems ones with names suggesting help. Serena McMahonadapted it for the web. Dasani keeps forgetting to count the newest child. Every once in a while, it would. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the PALS Plus NJ OverDrive Library digital collection. "Invisible Child" follows the story of Dasani, a young homeless girl in New York City. Andrea Elliott: Okay. She's like, "And I smashed their eyes out and I'd do this.". Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. And it's, I think, a social good to do so. It's part of the reason I stayed on it for eight years is it just kept surprising me and I kept finding myself (LAUGH) drawn back in. (LAUGH) You know? It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. I had not ever written a book. Who paid for water in a bottle? We break their necks. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. Chris Hayes: Once again, great thanks to Andrea Elliott. . Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. Dasani's 20. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. ", And we were working through a translator. And demographers have studied this and I think that we still don't really know ultimately. Now in her 20s, Dasani became the first in her immediate family to graduate high school, and she enrolled in classes at LaGuardia Community College. She had a lot of issues. And, you know, I think that there's, in the prose itself, tremendous, you know, I think, sort of, ethical clarity and empathy and humanization. IE 11 is not supported. Chris Hayes: You know, the U.S., if you go back to de Tocqueville and before that, the Declaration and the founders, you know, they're very big (LAUGH) on civic equality. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. So Bed-Stuy, East New York. Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. In New York, I feel proud. That's so irresponsible." Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. How an "immersionist" held up the story Journalist Andrea Elliott followed a homeless child named Dasani for almost a decade, as she navigated family trauma and a system stacked against her. They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? Eleven-year-old Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates is a primary caregiver for her seven siblings. Criminal justice. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. They did go through plenty of cycles of trying to fix themselves. Only their sister Dasani is awake. And so Dasani went literally from one day to the next from the north shore of Staten Island where she was living in a neighborhood that was very much divided along the lines of gang warfare. And she just loved that. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours, Elliott says. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. She would just look through the window. Invisible Child Andrea Elliott So this was the enemy. We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers.