A movie has scenes. She has hit a major milestone, though. I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. And it really was for that clientele, I believe. They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. And through the years of American journalism, and some of the best journalism that has been produced, is about talking about what that looks like at the ground level. She was a single mother. This is usually the sound that breaks Dasanis trance, causing her to leave the window and fetch Lee-Lees bottle. I mean, this was a kid who had been, sort of, suddenly catapulted on to the front page of The New York Times for five days. Just a few blocks from townhouses that were worth millions of dollars. Dasani's roots in Fort Greene go back for generations. And when she left, the family began to struggle, and for a variety of reasons, came under the scrutiny of the city's child protection agency. Her husband also had a drug history. But I would say that at the time, the parents saw that trust as an obstacle to any kind of real improvement because they couldn't access it because donors didn't want money going into the hands of parents with a drug history and also because they did continue to receive public assistance. They're quite spatially separated from it. I was never allowing myself to get too comfortable. Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless And part of the reason I think that is important is because the nature of the fracturing (LAUGH) of American society is such that as we become increasingly balkanized, there's a kind of spacial separation that happens along class lines. Nowadays, Room 449 is a battleground. She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. I focused on doing projects, long form narrative pieces that required a lot of time and patience on the part of my editors and a lot of swinging for the fences in terms of you don't ever know how a story is going to pan out. I do, though. There are more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. She saw this ad in a glossy magazine while she was, I believe, at a medical clinic. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? Actually, I'd had some opportunities, but I was never in love with a story like this one. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. 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. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. Dasanis room was where they put the crazies, she says, citing as proof the broken intercom on the wall. It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. Child protection. Dasani races back upstairs, handing her mother the bottle. And she wants to be able to thrive there. And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. It's a really, really great piece of work. And, yeah, maybe talk a little bit about what that experience is like for her. Author Andrea Elliott followed Dasani and her family for nearly 10 years, Try to explain your work as much as you can." And I could never see what the next turn would be. You have to be from a low income family. The people I grew up with. Then the series ran at the end of 2013. And unemployed. We suffocate them with the salt!. Toothbrushes, love letters, a dictionary, bicycles, an Xbox, birth certificates, Skippy peanut butter, underwear. By the time I got to Dasani's family, I had that stack and I gave it to them. Right? By Ryan Chittum. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. "What were you thinking in this moment? We have a period where basically from the New Deal to 1980, inequality in the country shrinks and then the story, as you well know, from 1980 to now is just skyrocketing inequality. Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series The Milton Hershey School is an incredible, incredible place. She wakes to the sound of breathing. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. Clothing donations. This family is a family that prides itself on so many things about its system as a family, including its orderliness. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? 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. So this was the enemy. The movies." Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. She is sure the place is haunted. Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" 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. That, to be honest, is really home. It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. And in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." But basically, Dasani came to see that money as something for the future, not an escape from poverty. I feel accepted.". And I said, "Yes." 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. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. 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 Tweet us at the hashtag #WITHPod. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. Dasani described the familys living quarters as so cramped, it was like 10 people trying to breathe in the same room and they only give you five windows, Elliott recalls. She spent eight years falling the story And I don't think she could ever recover from that. 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 there's some poverty reporting where, like, it feels, you know, a little gross or it feels a little, like, you know, alien gaze-y (LAUGH) for lack of a better word. She changed diapers, fed them and took them to school. And welcome to Why Is This Happening? Multiply her story by thousands of children in cities across the U.S. living through the same experiences and the country confronts a crisis. 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 I live in Harlem. She counts her siblings in pairs, just like her mother said. The mice used to terrorise Dasani, leaving pellets and bite marks. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. Elliott writes that few children have both the depth of dishonest troubles and the height of her promise., But Dasanis story isnt about an extraordinary child who made it out of poverty. The book takes on poverty, homelessness, racism, addiction, hunger, and more as they shape the lives of one remarkable girl and her family. I never stopped reporting on her life. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Dasani is not an anomaly. It comes loud and fast, with a staccato rhythm. Sleek braids fall to one side of Dasanis face, clipped by yellow bows. Mice scurry across the floor. So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. Baby Lee-Lee has yet to learn about hunger, or any of its attendant problems. So she's taking some strides forward. You're not supposed to be watching movies. What Hershey calls code switching, which is you switch between the norms, the linguistic codes, and behaviors of one place to another so that you can move within both worlds or many worlds. She sorts them like laundry. Only together have they learned to navigate povertys systems ones with names suggesting help. And the Big Apple gets a new mayor, did get a new mayor this weekend. Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. Different noises mean different things. Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. She would wake up. For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? I got a fork and a spoon. And about 2,000 kids go there. Every once in a while, it would. The popping of gunshots. Like, I would love to meet a woman who's willing to go through childbirth for just a few extra dollars on your food stamp benefits (LAUGH) that's not even gonna last the end of the month." This is freighted by other forces beyond her control hunger, violence, unstable parenting, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. If you use the word homeless, usually the image that comes to mind is of a panhandler or someone sleeping on subway grates. And at that time, I just had my second child and I was on leave at home in Washington, D.C. where I had grown up. INVISIBLE CHILD POVERTY, SURVIVAL & HOPE IN AN AMERICAN CITY. And I'll get to that in a second. I don't want to really say what Dasani's reaction is for her. People often remark on her beauty the high cheekbones and chestnut skin but their comments never seem to register. And that was stunning to me. Elliott What is crossing the line? She would help in all kinds of ways. 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.". This is the place where people go to be free. It was this aspiration that was, like, so much a part of her character. 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. She had a lot of issues. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. And a lot of things then happen after that. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. Their voucher had expired. We'd love to hear from you. 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 knows such yearnings will go unanswered. Tempers explode. But you know what a movie is. And there was a lot of complicated feelings about that book, as you might imagine. I got rice, chicken, macaroni. The fork and spoon are her parents and the macaroni her siblings - except for Baby Lee-Lee, who is a plump chicken breast. ", And we were working through a translator. First of all, I don't rely on my own memory. And then, of course, over time, what happens in the United States is that we become less and less materially equal. Her siblings are her greatest solace; their separation her greatest fear. And my process involved them. (LAUGH) She said to me at one point, "I mean, I want to say to them, especially if it's a man who's saying this, 'Have you ever been through childbirth?'. And they were things that I talked about with the family a lot. Chapter 1. She sees this bottled water called Dasani and it had just come out. Elliott spent Serena McMahon Twitter Digital ProducerSerena McMahon was a digital producer for Here & Now. Then they will head outside, into the bright light of morning. Ethical issues. Except for Baby Lee-Lee, who wails like a siren. And then I wanted to find a target in New York, a good focal point in New York. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. And so she named her daughter Chanel. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and Roaches crawl to the ceiling. 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. The book is called Invisible Child. But under court supervision, he had remained with the children, staying clean while his wife entered a drug treatment programme. Despite the circumstances, Dasani radiated with potential. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. And there's so much to say about it. "Invisible Child" follows the story of Dasani, a young homeless girl in New York City. (LAUGH) Like those kinds of, like, cheap colognes. You have a greater likelihood of meeting someone who might know of a job or, "Hey, there's someone in my building who needs a such." She is a child of New York City. 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. The citys wealth has flowed to its outer edges, bringing pour-over coffee and artisanal doughnuts to places once considered gritty. We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. The other thing you asked about were the major turning points. Her body is still small enough to warm with a hairdryer. All these things, kind of, coalesced to create a crisis, which is so often the case with being poor is that it's a lot of small things suddenly happening at once that then snowball into something catastrophic. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. And I just wonder, like, how you thought about it as you went through this project. 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. Chris Hayes speaks with Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist and author Andrea Elliott about her book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City., Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Andrea Elliott: Absolutely. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. So by the time I got to Dasani's family, this was a very different situation. But with Shaka Ritashata (PH), I remember using all of the, sort of, typical things that we say as journalists. But, like, that's not something that just happens. She would change her diaper. And that's really true of the poor. Elliott picks up the story in Invisible Child , a book that goes well beyond her original reporting in both journalistic excellence and depth of insight. It's important to not live in a silo. She was such a remarkable and charismatic figure, and also because her story was so compelling. 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. Dasani gazes out of the window from the one room her family of 10 shared in the Brooklyn homeless shelter where they lived for almost four years. To see Dasani is to see all the places of her life, from the corridors of school to the emergency rooms of hospitals to the crowded vestibules of family court and welfare. And there was this, sort of, sudden public awakening around inequality. In the city, I mean, I have a 132 hours of audio recorded of all my reporting adventures. It's on the west side just west of downtown. But nothing like this. Chris Hayes: Hello. Dasani, a tiny eleven-year-old girl when the book begins in 2012, has learned the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. It happens because there's a lot of thought and even theory, I think, put into the practice. I mean, I think everyone knows there are a lot of poor people, particularly a lot of poor people in urban centers, although there are a lot of poor people in rural areas. She's seeing all of this is just starting to happen. No one on the block can outpace Dasani. Dasani squints to check the date. Their sister is always first. What did you think then?" Chanel always says, "Blood is thicker than water." They felt that they had a better handle on my process by then. 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. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. And, actually, sometimes those stories are important because they raise alarms that are needed. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. I mean, everything fell on its face. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. 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 west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. Where do you first encounter her in the city? And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. And he didn't really understand what my purpose was. And that was not available even a month ago. Each spot is routinely swept and sprayed with bleach and laid with mousetraps. And one of the things that I found interesting is that one of the advantages to being within such close proximity to wealthy people is that people would drop off donations at the shelter. You know, she just knew this other world was there and it existed and it did not include her. I was around a lot of folks like Lee Ann Fujii, who passed away. Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott spent nearly a decade following Dasani and her family. To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: the donated clothing is top shelf. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. Andrea Elliott: I didn't really have a beat. Part of the government. So to what extent did Dasani show agency within this horrible setting? They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. Random House, 2021. Chris Hayes: Yeah. There were evictions. Dasani squints to check the date. 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. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. It wasn't a safe thing. Either give up your public assistance and you can have this money or not. Chris Hayes: So she's back in the city. She knew she had to help get her siblings fed and dressed. What's also true, though, is that as places like New York City and Los Angeles and San Francisco and even Detroit and Washington, D.C. have increasingly gentrified, the experience of growing up poor is one of being in really close proximity with people who have money. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. WebIn Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. So civic equality is often honored in the breach, but there is the fact that early on, there is a degree of material equality in the U.S. that is quite different from what you find in Europe. The children are ultimately placed in foster care, and Dasani blames herself for it. (modern). To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. What was striking to me was how little changed. She was often tired. At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. And what was happening in New York was that we were reaching a kind of new level. 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. After Dasanis family left the homeless shelter, she was accepted to the Milton Hershey School, a tuition-free boarding school for low-income children in Pennsylvania. Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on May 16, 2022. Chris Hayes: Once again, great thanks to Andrea Elliott. She will kick them awake. 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. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. She was the second oldest, but technically, as far as they were all concerned, she was the boss of the siblings and a third parent, in a sense. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. The sound that matters has a different pitch. She is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College in New York. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. And demographers have studied this and I think that we still don't really know ultimately. Her mother had grown up in a very different time. Nearly a quarter of Dasanis childhood has unfolded at Auburn, where she shares a 520-square-foot room with her parents and So you mentioned There Are No Children Here. 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. Her name was Dasani. We're in a new century. But I met her standing outside of that shelter. And I did some quick research and I saw that, in fact, the child poverty rate remained one in five. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. And at that time in my career, it was 2006. She was just one of those kids who had so many gifts that it made her both promising in the sense of she could do anything with her life. Nearly a year ago, the citys child protection agency had separated 34-year-old Chanel Sykes from her children after she got addicted to opioids.

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