I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. And I had an experience where someone I knew and was quite close to is actually an anthropologist doing field work in Henry Horner Homes after There Are No Children Here. But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. Right? Despite the circumstances, Dasani radiated with potential. So in There Are No Children Here, you know, if you go over there to the Henry Horner Homes on the west side, you do have the United Center. Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. Her parents are avid readers. She says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. Chris Hayes: Dasani is 11 years old. She was often tired. 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. Lee-Lees cry was something else. You know, it was low rise projects. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. Dasani squints to check the date. Best to try to blend in while not caring when you dont. And a lot of that time was spent together. 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. . Dasani is not an anomaly. 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. Dasani was growing up at a time where, you know, the street was in some ways dangerous depending on what part of Brooklyn you are, but very, very quickly could become exciting. 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. They would look at them and say, "How could they have eight children? Andrea Elliott: Yeah. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. 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." Chris Hayes: Yeah. Author Andrea Elliott followed Dasani and her family for nearly 10 years, How you get out isn't the point. And the translator would translate and was actually showing this fly. Andrea joins to talk about her expanded coverage of the Coates family story, which is told in her new book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City.. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. And we can talk about that more. And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. They wound up being placed at Auburn. Criminal justice. So by the time I got to Dasani's family, this was a very different situation. Well, every once in a while, a roach here and there in New York. This is where she derives her greatest strength. Entire neighbourhoods would be remade, their families displaced, their businesses shuttered, their histories erased by a gentrification so vast and meteoric that no brand of bottled water could have signalled it. This is For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. Her mother had grown up in a very different time. We see a story of a girl who's trying to not escape, she says. And one thing I found really interesting about your introduction, which so summarizes the reason I feel that this story matters, is this fracturing of America. Theres nearly 1.38 million homeless schoolchildren in the U.S. About one in 12 live in New York City. Why Is This Happening? And they have 12 kids per home. I mean, that is one of many issues. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. 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.". But at that time, just like it was at the time that There Are No Children Here came out, it's the highest child poverty rate of almost any wealthy nation. But she was not at all that way with the mice. I think that that was a major compass for me was this idea that, "Don't ever get too comfortable that you know your position here or your place. She was so tender with her turtle. But with Shaka Ritashata (PH), I remember using all of the, sort of, typical things that we say as journalists. You know, my fridge was always gonna be stocked. Andrea Elliott: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. She had a drug (INAUDIBLE). She could go anywhere. 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. One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. It happens because there's a lot of thought and even theory, I think, put into the practice. We suffocate them with the salt!. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. 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. It has more than a $17 billion endowment. 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. She trots into the cafeteria, where more than a hundred families will soon stand in line to heat their prepackaged breakfast. She would help in all kinds of ways. So it's interesting how, you know, you always see what's happening on the street first before you see it 10,000 feet above the ground in terms of policy or other things. So Chanel is in Bed-Stuy. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. You know, she just knew this other world was there and it existed and it did not include her. Toothbrushes, love letters, a dictionary, bicycles, an Xbox, birth certificates, Skippy peanut butter, underwear. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. In 2019, when the school bell rang at the end of the day, more than 100,000 schoolchildren in New York City had no permanent home to return to. I saw in Supreme and in Chanel a lot of the signs of someone who is self-medicating. She is among 432 homeless children and parents living at Auburn. And I think that that's also what she would say. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. She is the least of Dasanis worries. 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 Parental neglect, failure to provide necessities for ones children like shelter or clothing, is one form of child maltreatment that differs from child abuse, she says. There are a lot of different gradations of what that poverty looks like. You get birthday presents. And it also made her indispensable to her parents, which this was a real tension from the very beginning. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. So this was the enemy. 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. 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 first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. And that was a new thing for me. She will kick them awake. (LAUGH) Like those kinds of, like, cheap colognes. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. 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. 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, of course, not. She saw this ad in a glossy magazine while she was, I believe, at a medical clinic. There's so much upheaval. Then she sets about her chores, dumping the mop bucket, tidying her dresser, and wiping down the small fridge. And so they had a choice. Andrea Elliott: I met Dasani while I was standing outside of Auburn Family Residence, which is a city run, decrepit shelter, one of two city run shelters that were notorious for the conditions that children were forced to live in with their families. I had an early experience of this with Muslim immigrant communities in the United States that I reported on for years. They did go through plenty of cycles of trying to fix themselves. Mice scurry across the floor. ", And we were working through a translator. The problems of poverty are so much greater, so much more overwhelming than the power of being on the front page of The New York Times. 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. The bodegas were starting. If danger comes, Dasani knows what to do. She makes do with what she has and covers what she lacks. So I work very closely with audio and video tools. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. Random House, 2021. 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. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. 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. What is that?" Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. 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. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. It's something that I have wrestled with from the very beginning and continue to throughout. Still, the baby howls. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. They have yet to stir. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. She had seven siblings. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. It's on the west side just west of downtown. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. he wakes to the sound of breathing. And you just have to know that going in and never kid yourself that it has shifted. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. She felt the burdens of home life lift off her shoulders, giving her the opportunity to focus her energy on schoolwork, join the track team and cheerleading squad, and make significant gains in math. But every once in a while, when by some miracle she scores a pair of Michael Jordans, she finds herself succumbing to the same exercise: she wears them sparingly, and only indoors, hoping to keep them spotless. And it was an extraordinary experience. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. She irons her clothes with a hair straightener. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. Nuh-uh. And it is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I'm a practitioner as well. Her parents were in and out of jail for theft, fights and drugs. Her hope for herself is to keep, as she's put it to me, her family and her culture close to her while also being able to excel.. She felt that she left them and this is what happened. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. IE 11 is not supported. And then, of course, over time, what happens in the United States is that we become less and less materially equal. Her mother, Chanel Sykes, went as a child, leaving Brooklyn on a bus for Pittsburgh to escape the influence of a crack-addicted parent. Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series And he immediately got it. She would then start to feed the baby. Then they will head outside, into the bright light of morning. The turtle they had snuck into the shelter. In the dim chaos of Room 449, she struggles to find Lee-Lees formula, which is donated by the shelter but often expired. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. How did you respond? We're in a new century. 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. Chris Hayes: Yeah. 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. And she said that best in her own words. And there's a bunch of ways to look at that picture. And it really was for that clientele, I believe. And at that time in my career, it was 2006. And in all these cases, I think, like, you know, there's a duty for a journalist to tell these stories. Andrea, thank you so much. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. 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. I just find them to be some of the most interesting people I've ever met. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. It is a private landmark the very place where her beloved grandmother Joanie Sykes was born, back when this was Cumberland Hospital. I have a lot on my plate, she likes to say, cataloging her troubles like the contents of a proper meal. 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.. Their sister is always first. Chapter 1. One in five kids. The mice used to terrorise Dasani, leaving pellets and bite marks. Every inch of the room is claimed. Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" East New York still is to a certain degree, but Bed-Stuy has completely changed now. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. What happens when trying to escape poverty means separating from your family at 13? And in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." The sound of that name. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. I think it's so natural for an outsider to be shocked by the kind of conditions that Dasani was living in. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. And there's so much to say about it. She counts her siblings in pairs, just like her mother said. Her body is still small enough to warm with a hairdryer. Chris Hayes: Once again, great thanks to Andrea Elliott. Elliott spent The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. They have learned to sleep through anything. Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. And now, on this bright September morning, Dasani will take her grandmothers path once again, to the promising middle school two blocks away. And I met Dasani right in that period, as did the principal. For a time, she thrived there. She's passing through. In this moving but occasionally flat narrative, Elliott follows Dasani for eight years, beginning in 2012 when she was 11 years old and living in To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. 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. I took 14 trips to see her at Hershey. And it's not because people didn't care or there wasn't the willpower to help Dasani. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. And that's just the truth. The2009 financial crisis taught us hard lessons. 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. We're gonna both pretend we've seen movies. 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. Just a few blocks away are different or, kind of, safer feeling, but maybe alienating also. 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. This is typical of Dasani. All rights reserved. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. (LAUGH) She would try to kill them every week. The movies." It's told in her newest book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. She could even tell the difference between a cry for hunger and a cry for sleep. 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.

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