Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. She will focus in class and mind her manners in the schoolyard. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. It's helping them all get through college. She calls him Daddy. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. Shes not alone. No one on the block can outpace Dasani. It's something that I have wrestled with from the very beginning and continue to throughout. Andrea Elliott: So at the end of the five days that it took for me to read the book to Dasani, when we got to the last line, she said, "That's the last line?" Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. Right? Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. She is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College in New York. And at the same time, what if these kids ten years from now regret it? Try to explain your work as much as you can." Now the bottle must be heated. And that's just the truth. And she tried to stay the path. In this extract from her new book, Invisible Child, we meet Dasani Coates in 2012, aged 11 and living in a shelter, Read an interview with Andrea Elliott here. It's called Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. She saw this ad in a glossy magazine while she was, I believe, at a medical clinic. "What were you thinking in this moment? And she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. How you get out isn't the point. She was unemployed. Public assistance. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. Her siblings are her greatest solace; their separation her greatest fear. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Only their sister Dasani is awake. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and In 2013, the story of a young girl named Dasani Coates took up five front pages in The New York Times. Andrea, thank you so much. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. She lives in a house run by a married couple. I have a lot of possibility. The difference is in resources. Thank you! And I had focused for years on the story of Islam in a post-9/11 America. She's seeing all of this is just starting to happen. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. So I work very closely with audio and video tools. They did go through plenty of cycles of trying to fix themselves. The citys wealth has flowed to its outer edges, bringing pour-over coffee and artisanal doughnuts to places once considered gritty. She is 20 years old. He said, "Yes. It's important to not live in a silo. And he immediately got it. When she left New York City, her loved ones lost a crucial member of the family, and in her absence, things fell apart. 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. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. Nonetheless, she landed on the honor roll that fall. By the time, I would say, a lot of school kids were waking up, just waking up in New York City to go to school, Dasani had been working for two hours. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. Sort of, peak of the homeless crisis. Laundry piled up. And these bubbles get, sort of, smaller and smaller, in which people are increasingly removed from these different strata of American life. Andrea Elliott: I didn't really have a beat. She was often tired. Family was everything for them. Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. Multiply her story by thousands of children in cities across the U.S. living through the same experiences and the country confronts a crisis. And I said, "Yes." The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. She would help in all kinds of ways. April 17, 2014 987 words. But you have to understand that in so doing, you carry a great amount of responsibility to, I think, first and foremost, second guess yourself constantly. At that time when Chanel was born in '78, her mother was living in a place where it was rare to encounter a white person. She ends up there. We see a story of a girl who's trying to not escape, she says. She has a delicate oval face and luminous eyes that watch everything, owl-like. But she was not at all that way with the mice. It has more than a $17 billion endowment. Her eyes can travel into Manhattan, to the top of the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach a hundred floors. And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. 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. She has hit a major milestone, though. You know, we're very much in one another's lives. It is on the fourth floor of that shelter, at a window facing north, that Dasani now sits looking out. This is an extract from Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City by Andrea Elliott (Hutchinson Heinemann, 16.99). One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. Dasani places the bottle in the microwave and presses a button. But she was so closely involved in my process. Her mother had grown up in a very different time. 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. he wakes to the sound of breathing. She could even tell the difference between a cry for hunger and a cry for sleep. This is freighted by other forces beyond her control hunger, violence, unstable parenting, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. Andrea Elliott: Absolutely. We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. On mornings like this, she can see all the way past Brooklyn, over the rooftops and the projects and the shimmering East River. And that's really true of the poor. This was north of Fort Greene park. She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. She was 11 years old. Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" And I think that that's also what she would say. But because of the nature of how spread out Chicago was, the fact that this was not a moment of gentrification in the way that we think about it now, particularly in the, sort of, post-2000 comeback city era and then the post-financial crisis, that the kids in that story are not really cheek by jowl with all of the, kind of, wealth that is in Chicago. And at that time in my career, it was 2006. And he didn't really understand what my purpose was. How long is she in that shelter? And they agreed to allow me to write a book and to continue to stay in their lives. But you know what a movie is. But nothing like this. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. Mice were running everywhere. In the blur of the citys streets, Dasani is just another face. There's a huge separation that happens in terms of the culture that people consume, the podcasts they listen to or don't listen to, the shows they watch. Right? Chris Hayes: Yeah. It was really so sweet. This is usually the sound that breaks Dasanis trance, causing her to leave the window and fetch Lee-Lees bottle. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. I never stopped reporting on her life. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. It never works. I mean, these were people with tremendous potential and incredible ideas about what their lives could be that were such a contrast to what they were living out. 6. Today, Dasani lives surrounded by wealth, whether she is peering into the boho chic shops near her shelter or surfing the internet on Auburns shared computer. First of all, Dasani landed there in 2010 because her family had been forced out of their section eight rental in Staten Island. She was doing so well. And a lot of things then happen after that. Hidden in a box is Dasanis pet turtle, kept alive with bits of baloney and the occasional Dorito. The 10-year-olds next: Avianna, who snores the loudest, and Nana, who is going blind. And one thing this book's gotten me to see is how the word homeless really is a misnomer, because these people have such a sense of belonging, especially in New York City. Webwhat kind of cancer did nancy kulp have; nickname for someone with a short attention span; costa rican spanish accent; nitric acid and potassium hydroxide exothermic or endothermic We get the robber barons and the Industrial Revolution. Chris Hayes: --real tropes (LAUGH) of this genre. Now the bottle must be heated. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book? Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. They felt that they had a better handle on my process by then. And welcome to Why Is This Happening? With only two microwaves, this can take an hour. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. We're gonna both pretend we've seen movies. She would just look through the window. I think it's so natural for an outsider to be shocked by the kind of conditions that Dasani was living in. It's why do so many not? Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. And it was an extraordinary experience. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. I mean, I have a lot of deep familiarity with the struggle of substance abuse in my own family. I got a fork and a spoon. That image has stayed with me ever since because it was so striking the discipline that they showed to just walk in single file the unity, the strength of that bond, Elliott says. Dasani was in many ways a parent to her seven younger brothers and sisters. Her skyline is filled with luxury towers, the beacons of a new gilded age. But basically, Dasani came to see that money as something for the future, not an escape from poverty. Mice scurry across the floor. And, you know, this was a new school. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. Her stepfather's name is Supreme. Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. And they act as their surrogate parents. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. And about 2,000 kids go there. But when you remove her from the family system, this was predictable that the family would struggle, because she was so essential to that. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Children are not often the face of homelessness, but their stories are heartbreaking and sobering: childhoods denied spent in and out of shelters, growing up with absent parents and often raising themselves and their siblings. Every morning, Dasani leaves her grandmothers birthplace to wander the same streets where Joanie grew up, playing double Dutch in the same parks, seeking shade in the same library. How did you respond? Elliott She was commuting from Harlem to her school in Brooklyn. The bodegas were starting. 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 In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. Her mother, Chanel Sykes, went as a child, leaving Brooklyn on a bus for Pittsburgh to escape the influence of a crack-addicted parent. And that gets us to 2014. You can tell that story, as we have on the podcast, about the, sort of, crunched middle class, folks who want to afford college and can't. At that time when I met her when she was 11, Dasani would wake around 5 a.m. and the first thing she did, she always woke before all of her other siblings. Dasani Coates, the 11-year-old homeless child profiled in Andrea Elliotts highly praised five-part New York Times feature, arrived on stage at Wednesdays inauguration ceremonies to serve as a poignant symbol ofin Mayor de Blasios wordsthe economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love. Some donations came in. Her name was Dasani. And this is a current that runs through this family, very much so, as you can see by the names. And I had avoided it. Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. So to what extent did Dasani show agency within this horrible setting? 11:12 - asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. (LAUGH) You know? It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequalitytold through the crucible of one remarkable girl. Beyond the shelters walls, in the fall of 2012, Dasani belongs to an invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children the highest number ever recorded, in the most unequal metropolis in America. And There Are No Children Here, which takes place in what's called Henry Horner Homes, which is in the west side of Chicago right by what is now called the United Center, which is where the Bulls play. Her parents survived major childhood traumas. Thats what Invisible Child is about, Elliott says, the tension between what is and what was for Dasani, whose life is remarkable, compelling and horrifying in many ways. And the Big Apple gets a new mayor, did get a new mayor this weekend. Where is Dasani now? To follow Dasani, as she comes of age, is also to follow her seven siblings. Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. Right? She makes do with what she has and covers what she lacks. I had spent years as a journalist entering into communities where I did not immediately belong or seem to belong as an outsider. We often focus on the stories of children who make it out of tumultuous environments. You know? Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. The other thing you asked about were the major turning points. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. So thats a lot on my plate with some cornbread. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Rarely does that happen for children living in poverty like Dasani who are willing and capable but who are inundated with problems not of their own making, she says. She wanted to create this fortress, in a way. The turtle they had snuck into the shelter. Back then, from the ghettos isolated corners, a perfume ad seemed like the portal to a better place. She is forever in motion, doing backflips at the bus stop, dancing at the welfare office. Different noises mean different things. This family is a proud family. You know, that's part of it. In fact, there's the, kind of, brushes that the boys have with things outside of their, kind of, experience of poverty and class have to do with, like, parking cars (LAUGH) or helping cars and stuff and selling water at the United Center where there's all sorts of, like, fancy Chicago roles through. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. And it wasn't a huge amount of money as far as I know, although Legal Aid's never told me (LAUGH) exactly how much is in it. And I just spent so much time with this family and that continues to be the case. So Chanel is in Bed-Stuy. ", I think if we look at Dasani's trajectory, we see a different kind of story. Radiating out from them in all directions are the eight children they share: two boys and five girls whose beds zigzag around the baby, her crib warmed by a hairdryer perched on a milk crate. And so you can get braces. The popping of gunshots. And that would chase off the hunger faster. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. I mean, I called her every day almost for years. 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. Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. And so this was his great legacy was to create a school for children in need. I think that you're absolutely right that the difference isn't in behavior. She's like, "And I smashed their eyes out and I'd do this.". There are parts of it that are painful. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. I saw in Supreme and in Chanel a lot of the signs of someone who is self-medicating. Andrea Elliott: Okay. Sleek braids fall to one side of Dasanis face, clipped by yellow bows. "Invisible Child" follows the story of Dasani, a young homeless girl in New York City. And that was stunning to me. 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. (modern). 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 I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. And her principal had this idea that she should apply to a school that I had never heard of called the Milton Hershey School, which is a school in Hershey, Pennsylvania that tries to reform poor children. At one point, one, I think it was a rat, actually bit baby Lele, the youngest of the children, and left pellets all over the bed. Almost half of New Yorks 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. 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. I want to be very clear. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. I live in Harlem. They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. Each home at the school, they hire couples who are married who already have children to come be the house parents. And, yeah, maybe talk a little bit about what that experience is like for her. She felt that they were trying to make her, sort of, get rid of an essential part of herself that she was proud of. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. She sees this bottled water called Dasani and it had just come out. Dasani would call it my spy pen. This is according to her sister, because Joanie has since passed. And which she fixed. We take the sticks and smash they eyes out! To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. And there was this, sort of, sudden public awakening around inequality. Elliott says those are the types of stories society tends to glorify because it allows us to say, if you work hard enough, if you are gifted enough, then you can beat this.. Why Is This Happening? This focus on language, this focus on speaking a certain way and dressing a certain way made her feel like her own family culture home was being rejected. The other thing I would say is that we love the story of the kid who made it out. Well, by the way, that really gets in the way of getting a job. What I would say is that you just have to keep wrestling with it. It was a high poverty neighborhood to a school where every need is taken care of. And it is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I'm a practitioner as well. And by the time she got her youngest siblings to school and got to her own school, usually late, she had missed the free breakfast at the shelter and the free breakfast at her school. Why Is This Happening? is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and features music by Eddie Cooper. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about your subjective perspective and your experience as this observer and the ethical complications (LAUGH) of that and talk a little bit about how you dealt with that right after we take this quick break. They would look at them and say, "How could they have eight children? To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: the donated clothing is top shelf. But what about the ones who dont? The ground beneath her feet once belonged to them. Either give up your public assistance and you can have this money or not. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. And that was a new thing for me. A movie has characters." (LAUGH) And the market produces massively too little affordable housing, which is in some ways part of the story of Dasani and her family, which is the city doesn't have enough affordable housing. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. 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. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth Fremson , it sparked direct action from incoming Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who had Dasani on the stage at his administrations inauguration in January 2014. And to her, that means doing both things keeping her family in her life while also taking strides forward, the journalist says. It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. How you get out isn't the point. It is also a story that reaches back in time to one Black family making its way through history, from slavery to the Jim Crow South and then the Great Migrations passage north. And that was not available even a month ago. She made leaps ahead in math. That's so irresponsible." So I'm really hoping that that changes. Like, she was wearing Uggs at one point and a Patagonia fleece at another point. So she knows what it's like to suddenly be the subject of a lot of people's attention. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. It's painful. And she wants to be able to thrive there. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? And then they tried to assert control. Like, you do an incredible job on that. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. Except for Baby Lee-Lee, who wails like a siren. Luckily, in this predawn hour, the cafeteria is still empty. (LAUGH) Because they ate so much candy, often because they didn't have proper food. She wakes to the sound of breathing. They follow media carefully. Chanel. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. And unemployed. A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. 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. How did you feel, you know, about the pipe that's leaking?" She loved to sit on her windowsill. And she just loved that. I still have it. In 2012, there were 22,000 homeless children in New York City. 16K views, 545 likes, 471 loves, 3K comments, 251 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from EWTN: Starting at 8 a.m. For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Chris Hayes: That is such a profound point about the structure of American life and the aspirations for it. There is no separating Dasanis childhood from that of her matriarchs: her grandmother Joanie and her mother, Chanel. She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. The journalist will never forget the first time she saw the family unit traveling in a single file line, with mother Chanel Sykes leading the way as she pushed a stroller. And I hope that she'll continue to feel that way. She will tell them to shut up. And at one level, it's like, "It's our ethical duty to tell stories honestly and forcefully and truthfully." I think that when you get deeper inside and when you start to really try your best to understand on a more intimate level what those conditions mean for the person that you're writing about, so you stop imposing your outsider lens, although it's always gonna be there and you must be aware of it, and you try to allow for a different perspective. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner.
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