Note: This is a rough transcript please excuse any typos. 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. She's passing through. At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. 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. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Dasani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. 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. This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. Section eight, of course, is the federal rental voucher system for low income people to be able to afford housing. 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. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. They follow media carefully. The turtle they had snuck into the shelter. She's like, "And I smashed their eyes out and I'd do this.". 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 so they had a choice. She would wake up. 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. For a time, she thrived there. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. We take the sticks and smash they eyes out! Nearly a quarter of Dasanis childhood has unfolded at Auburn, where she shares a 520-square-foot room with her parents and She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. She was doing so well. But basically, Dasani came to see that money as something for the future, not an escape from poverty. She was a single mother. 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. How you get out isn't the point. So that's continued to be the case since the book ended. This week, an expansion of her reporting comes out within the pages of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City.. Lee-Lees cry was something else. 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. INVISIBLE CHILD POVERTY, SURVIVAL & HOPE IN AN AMERICAN CITY. Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. Almost half of New Yorks 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line. 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. She became the first child in her family to graduate high school and she has now entered LaGuardia Community College. What I would say is that you just have to keep wrestling with it. She wanted to create this fortress, in a way. She's had major ups and major downs. We're gonna both pretend we've seen movies. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. Alexander Tuerkproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withTodd Mundt. 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. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. We break their necks. On a good day, Dasani walks like she is tall, her chin held high. Hidden in a box is Dasanis pet turtle, kept alive with bits of baloney and the occasional Dorito. Dasani Coates photographed in September last year. 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 Chapter 42 Now a sophomore, Dasani believes that her family is desperately fractured. And I understand the reporters who, sort of, just stop there and they describe these conditions and they're so horrifying. But nonetheless, my proposal was to focus on Dasani and on her siblings, on children. There are parts of it that are painful. 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. And at the same time, there's the old Janet Malcolm line about how every journalist who's, you know, not deluded will tell you what they're doing is ethically indefensible, which is not true and, kind of, hyperbolic, but scratches at something a little bit of a kernel of truth, which is that, like, there is always something intense and strange and sometimes a little hard to reckon with when you are reporting and telling the story of people who are in crisis, emergency trauma and you, yourself, are not. And which she fixed. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. Right? A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. Andrea Elliott: Yeah. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? St. Patty's Day, green and white. So to what extent did Dasani show agency within this horrible setting? And I met Dasani right in that period, as did the principal. The rap of a security guards knuckles on the door. He said, "Yes. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. You have to be from a low income family. I had an early experience of this with Muslim immigrant communities in the United States that I reported on for years. So she would talk about this. She changed diapers, fed them and took them to school. It's, sort of, prismatic because, as you're talking about the separation of a nation in terms of its level of material comfort or discomfort, right, or material want, there's a million different stories to tell of what that looks like. She then moved from there to a shelter in Harlem and then to a shelter in the Bronx before finally, once again, landing another section eight voucher and being able to move back into a home with her family. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. So at the time, you know, I was at The New York Times and we wrestled with this a lot. And a few years back, there was this piece about a single girl in the New York City public school system in The New York Times that was really I think brought people up shore, 'cause it was so well done. Where is Dasani now? 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. But you know what a movie is. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. Part of the government. And that was not available even a month ago. She's just a visitor. An interview with Andrea Elliott, author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. Chris Hayes: Yeah. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. What did you think then?" There was no sign announcing the shelter, which rises over the neighbouring projects like an accidental fortress. PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "vivid and devastating" ( The New York Times ) portrait of an indomitable girl--from acclaimed journalist Andrea Elliott "From its first indelible pages to its rich and startling conclusion, Invisible Child had me, by turns, stricken, inspired, outraged, illuminated, in tears, and hungering Right? 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. And that really cracked me up because any true New Yorker likes to brag about the quality of our tap water. 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. It was incredibly confusing as a human being to go from their world back into mine on the Upper West Side in my rental with my kids who didn't have to worry about roaches. This is typical of Dasani. Only their sister Dasani is awake. is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In team and features music by Eddie Cooper. Like, you do an incredible job on that. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. And she'd go to her window, and she talked about this a lot. It makes me feel like theres something going on out there, she says. No one on the block can outpace Dasani. 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 Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. Homeless services. She loved to sit on her windowsill. And it's not because people didn't care or there wasn't the willpower to help Dasani. April 17, 2014 987 words. I had been there for a while. 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. Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? I was never allowing myself to get too comfortable. Dasani's 20. And I pulled off from my shelf this old copy of Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here, which is a classic incredible book about two brothers in the Chicago housing projects in the 1980s. Chris Hayes: Yeah. The children are ultimately placed in foster care, and Dasani blames herself for it. And then, of course, over time, what happens in the United States is that we become less and less materially equal. Andrea Elliott: So Milton Hershey School was created by America's chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, who left behind no children. It's a really, really great piece of work. Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. 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's seeing all of this is just starting to happen. 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. But she was not at all that way with the mice. And I'll get to that in a second. Like, these are--. You know, it was low rise projects. Just steps away are two housing projects and, tucked among them, a city-run homeless shelter where the heat is off and the food is spoiled. 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. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Try to explain your work as much as you can." Family wasn't an accident. Their sister is always first. I mean, everything fell on its face. Nonetheless, she landed on the honor roll that fall. I still have it. I was comfortable with that as a general notion of what I should be doing with my work, because I think that is our job as journalists. And it is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I'm a practitioner as well. She would just look through the window. It was a constant struggle. Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. You know, she just knew this other world was there and it existed and it did not include her. They can screech like alley cats, but no one is listening. Had been the subject of tremendous amounts of redlining and disinvestment and panic peddling that had essentially chased white homeowners out. The Child Protection Agency began monitoring Dasanis parents on suspicion of parental neglect, Elliott says. 4 Dasani blinks, looking out at Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. 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. And they agreed to allow me to write a book and to continue to stay in their lives. Invisible Child emerged from a series on poverty Elliott wrote for the New York Times in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement. She is forever in motion, doing backflips at the bus stop, dancing at the welfare office. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. She was such a remarkable and charismatic figure, and also because her story was so compelling. 16K views, 545 likes, 471 loves, 3K comments, 251 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from EWTN: Starting at 8 a.m. No, I know. And so this was his great legacy was to create a school for children in need. And I'm also, by the way, donating a portion of the proceeds of this book to the family, to benefit Dasani and her siblings and parents. "I just want to be a fly on the wall. And that's just the truth. This is the type of fact that nobody can know. It's just not in the formal labor market. 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 says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. 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. And what was happening in New York was that we were reaching a kind of new level. And, really, the difference is, like, the kind of safety nets, the kind of resources, the kind of access people have--. 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. She's transient." But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. But nothing like this. In the dim chaos of Room 449, she struggles to find Lee-Lees formula, which is donated by the shelter but often expired. Andrea Elliott: I didn't really have a beat. 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. And she tried to stay the path. 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. It comes loud and fast, with a staccato rhythm. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. She sorts them like laundry. Her city is paved over theirs. All you could buy at the local bodega at that time was Charlie. And there's a bunch of ways to look at that picture. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978. What was striking to me was how little changed. Her parents were struggling with a host of problems. They were put in a situation where things were out of their control. She had a drug (INAUDIBLE). She would then start to feed the baby. She has a delicate oval face and luminous eyes that watch everything, owl-like. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. And I have this pen that's called live scribe and it records sound while I'm writing. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours. 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. Mice were running everywhere. And the reporter who wrote that, Andrea Elliott, wrote a series of stories about Dasani. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's, first of all, the trust, which continues to exist and is something I think people should support. We'd love to hear from you. Chanel thought of Dasani. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. Any one of these afflictions could derail a promising child. I feel good. And he immediately got it. They're quite spatially separated from it. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. 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. She's pregnant with Dasani, 2001. She is a child of New York City. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. (LAUGH) She would try to kill them every week. You know? You're gonna get out of your own lane and go into other worlds. 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 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. 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. I do, though. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. 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. 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. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and Find that audio here. 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. 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. 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."
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