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It was a high poverty neighborhood to a school where every need is taken care of. And that's very clear in the context of her parents here. They follow media carefully. Alexander Tuerkproduced and edited this interview for broadcast withTodd Mundt. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978. Poverty and homelessness in the details: Dasani And you didn't really have firsthand access to what it looks like, what it smells like to be wealthy. Strangers do not see the opioid addiction that chases her mother, or the prisons that swallowed her uncles, or the cousins who have died from gang shootings and Aids. And she was actually living in the very building where her own grandmother had been born back when it was Cumberland Hospital, which was a public hospital. Nuh-uh. 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. Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. 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. And that was a new thing for me. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. 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. INVISIBLE CHILD POVERTY, SURVIVAL & HOPE IN AN AMERICAN CITY. Have Democrats learned them? 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. The material reality of Dasani's life her homelessness, her family's lack of money is merely the point of departure for understanding her human condition, she says. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. But nonetheless, my proposal was to focus on Dasani and on her siblings, on children. In the book, the major turning points are, first of all, where the series began, that she was in this absolutely horrifying shelter just trying to survive. And then their cover got blown and that was after the series ran. 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.". There was no sign announcing the shelter, which rises over the neighbouring projects like an accidental fortress. 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. Dasani Coates photographed in September last year. 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. Invisible Child 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. The rap of a security guards knuckles on the door. Named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyns gentrification, her story has been featured in five front pages of the New York Times. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. 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. It's in resources. Elliott There definitely are upsides. It literally saved us: what the USs new anti-poverty measure means for families, Millions of families receiving tax credit checks in effort to end child poverty, No one knew we were homeless: relief funds hope to reach students missing from virtual classrooms, I knew they were hungry: the stimulus feature that lifts millions of US kids out of poverty, 'Santa, can I have money for the bills?' I can read you the quote. And they have 12 kids per home. Where do you first encounter her in the city? Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. 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. 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. Chris Hayes: We don't have to go through all of the crises and challenges and brutal things that this family has to face and overcome and struggled through. When Dasani Left Home - The New York Times Roaches crawl to the ceiling. 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 jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. It's unpredictable. 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's something that I have wrestled with from the very beginning and continue to throughout. Her skyline is filled with luxury towers, the beacons of a new gilded age. "What's Chanel perfume? The brothers last: five-year-old Papa and 11-year-old Khaliq, who have converted their metal bunk into a boys-only fort. And she didn't want the streets to become her kids' family. The sound that matters has a different pitch. She is always warming a bottle or soothing a cranky baby. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. And at that time in my career, it was 2006. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. This is typical of Dasani. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. She had a lot of issues. Invisible Child They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. And this is a current that runs through this family, very much so, as you can see by the names. I had not ever written a book. Like, she was wearing Uggs at one point and a Patagonia fleece at another point. Child This is a pivotal, pivotal decade for Brooklyn. She was doing so well. She felt that she left them and this is what happened. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. And to her, that means doing both things keeping her family in her life while also taking strides forward, the journalist says. Some places are more felt than seen the place of homelessness, the place of sisterhood, the place of a mother-child bond that nothing can break. 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. She became the first child in her family to graduate high school and she has now entered LaGuardia Community College. But, of course, there's also the story of poverty, which has been a durable feature of American life for a very long time. dasani That's so irresponsible." And just exposure to diversity is great for anyone. 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. 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. Sometimes she doesnt have to blink. It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. She has hit a major milestone, though. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. She was named after the water bottle that is sold in bodegas and grocery stores. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the babys creaky stroller. To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: the donated clothing is top shelf. 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. So I work very closely with audio and video tools. "What were you thinking in this moment? Her mother had grown up in a very different time. One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. Poverty Isnt the Problem - Naomi Schaefer Riley, 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. The book takes on poverty, homelessness, racism, addiction, hunger, and more as they shape the lives of one remarkable girl and her family. First of all, Dasani landed there in 2010 because her family had been forced out of their section eight rental in Staten Island. But there's something ethically complex, at least emotionally complex. It happens because there's a lot of thought and even theory, I think, put into the practice. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. I live in Harlem. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. But I think she just experienced such an identity crisis and she felt so much guilt. 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. And so this was his great legacy was to create a school for children in need. She irons her clothes with a hair straightener. 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. So I think that is what's so interesting is you rightly point out that we are in this fractured country now. The people I hang out with. INVISIBLE CHILD | Kirkus Reviews And he didn't really understand what my purpose was. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. They would look at them and say, "How could they have eight children? And you can't go there unless you're poor. You get birthday presents. And by the way, at that time this was one of the richest cities in the world. She was unemployed. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? And you just have to know that going in and never kid yourself that it has shifted. It's why do so many not? She made leaps ahead in math. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. Right? And which she fixed. Sometimes it'll say, like, "Happy birthday, Jay Z," or, you know. 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. Yeah. Book Review: Invisible Child, by Andrea Elliott - The New York It starts as a investigation into what basically the lives of New York City's homeless school children look like, which is a shockingly large population, which we will talk about, and then migrates into a kind of ground level view of what being a poor kid in New York City looks like. Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In team and features music by Eddie Cooper. Only a mother could answer it, and for a while their mother was gone. Mice scurry across the floor. Child protection. 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. I do, though. And you got power out of fighting back on some level. In New York, I feel proud. In one part of the series, journalist Andrea Elliott contrasts the struggle of Dasanis ten member family living at a decrepit shelter to the gentrification and wealth on the other side of Fort Try to explain your work as much as you can." Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. And they were, kind of, swanky. Right? So she's taking some strides forward. I mean, I have a lot of deep familiarity with the struggle of substance abuse in my own family. And that carries a huge ethical quandary because you don't know, "Will they come to regret this later on?" She would wake up. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. Email withpod@gmail.com. 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. And she also struggled with having to act differently. This is where she derives her greatest strength. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. Now Dasani And as I started to, kind of, go back through it, I remember thinking, "How much has really changed?" Serena McMahon Twitter Digital ProducerSerena McMahon was a digital producer for Here & Now. 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. She felt that they were trying to make her, sort of, get rid of an essential part of herself that she was proud of. No one on the block can outpace Dasani. They will drop to the floor in silence. In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. Born at But the family liked the series enough to let me continue following them. Now the bottle must be heated. She just thought, "Who could afford that?". Their sister is always first. And even as you move into the 1820s and '30s when you have fights over, sort of, Jacksonian democracy and, kind of, popular sovereignty and will, you're still just talking about essentially white men with some kind of land, some kind of ownership and property rights. You find her outside this shelter. 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 were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. Shes tomorrows success, Im telling you right now.. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. 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. 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. 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. I have a lot of things to say.. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the Pioneer Library System digital collection. 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. Chris Hayes: Yeah. And so putting that aside, what really changed? Just the sound of it Dasani conjured another life. And these bubbles get, sort of, smaller and smaller, in which people are increasingly removed from these different strata of American life. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. They have yet to stir. Then they will head outside, into the bright light of morning. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. Elliott hopes Invisible Child readers see people beyond the limiting labels of homeless and poor and address the deep historical context that are part of these complicated problems, she says. And that was not available even a month ago. And, of course, the obvious thing that many people at the time noted was that, you know, there were over a million people in bondage at the same time they were saying this. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. The popping of gunshots. In 2013, the story of a young girl named Dasani Coates took up five front pages in The New York Times. 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. Dasani hugs her mother Chanel, with her sister Nana on the left, 2013. o 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. But when you remove her from the family system, this was predictable that the family would struggle, because she was so essential to that. Why Is This Happening? It is a story that begins at the dawn of the 21st century, in a global financial capital riven by inequality. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and She wakes to the sound of breathing. 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. Invisible Child She's transient." Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. Nope.. In defense of 'Dasani' - Columbia Journalism Review And they agreed to allow me to write a book and to continue to stay in their lives. 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. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. In the dim chaos of Room 449, she struggles to find Lee-Lees formula, which is donated by the shelter but often expired. This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. The book is called Invisible Child. 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.. 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. 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. Luckily, in this predawn hour, the cafeteria is still empty. How an "immersionist" held up the story The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. The turtle they had snuck into the shelter. He said, "Yes. And there's so much to say about it. So to what extent did Dasani show agency within this horrible setting? Eleven-year-old Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates is a primary caregiver for her seven siblings. To follow Dasani, as she comes of age, is also to follow her seven siblings. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. Journalist Andrea Elliott followed a homeless child named Dasani for almost a decade, as she navigated family trauma and a system stacked against her. And that's the sadness I found in watching what happened to their family as it disintegrated at the hands of these bigger forces. And that really cracked me up because any true New Yorker likes to brag about the quality of our tap water. Now you fast forward to 2001. Then she sets about her chores, dumping the mop bucket, tidying her dresser, and wiping down the small fridge. Invisible Child This is so important." This is an extract from Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City by Andrea Elliott (Hutchinson Heinemann, 16.99). 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. Life has been anything but easy for 20-year-old Dasani Coates. It was this aspiration that was, like, so much a part of her character. Chanel thought of Dasani. Right? But the other part is agency. I had spent years as a journalist entering into communities where I did not immediately belong or seem to belong as an outsider. I wanted to, kind of, follow up (LAUGH) the book that I loved so much in the '80s by looking once again at the story of poor urban America through one child. And yet, in cities, the fracturing happens within really close range. It's, first of all, the trust, which continues to exist and is something I think people should support. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. Tempers explode. And we're gonna talk a little bit about what that number is and how good that definition is. Shes And she talked about them brutally. I want to be very clear. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. You can try, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City., Why the foster care system needs to change as aid expires for thousands of aged-out youth, The Pandemic's Severe Toll On The Already-Strained Foster Care System. This family is a family that prides itself on so many things about its system as a family, including its orderliness. All rights reserved. All you could buy at the local bodega at that time was Charlie. Invisible Child Dasani's 20. And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. And it also made her indispensable to her parents, which this was a real tension from the very beginning. Every inch of the room is claimed. A concrete walkway leads to the lobby, which Dasani likens to a jail. Talk a little bit about where Dasani is now, her age, what she had to, sort of, come through, and also maybe a little bit about the fact that she was written about in The New York Times, like, might have affected that trajectory. It gave the young girl a feeling that theres something out there, Elliott says. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Different noises mean different things. Invisible Child On a good day, Dasani walks like she is tall, her chin held high. I had an early experience of this with Muslim immigrant communities in the United States that I reported on for years. First of all, I don't rely on my own memory. And at one level, it's like, "It's our ethical duty to tell stories honestly and forcefully and truthfully." She makes do with what she has and covers what she lacks. I read the book out to the girls. They were in drug treatment programs for most of the time that I was with them, mostly just trying to stay sober and often succeeding at it. Andrea Elliott: Absolutely. Like, you do an incredible job on that. And she'd go to her window, and she talked about this a lot. The 10-year-olds next: Avianna, who snores the loudest, and Nana, who is going blind. Uncovering 'The Invisible Child' with Andrea Elliott: They're quite spatially separated from it. And I said, "Yes." I never stopped reporting on her life. They cough or sometimes mutter in the throes of a dream. Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. I was never allowing myself to get too comfortable. Offering a rare look into how homelessness directs the course of a life, New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott was allowed to follow Dasani's family for almost 10 years. How did you respond? And then they tried to assert control. That, to be honest, is really home. Now you are a very halal Muslim leader. 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. Chapter 1. It comes loud and fast, with a staccato rhythm. And her first thought was, "Who would ever pay for water?" Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. If danger comes, Dasani knows what to do. 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. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. You have piano lessons and tutoring and, of course, academics and all kinds of athletic resources. You know, we're very much in one another's lives. And so it would break the rules. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. She is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College in New York. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. Andrea Elliott on Twitter So at the time, you know, I was at The New York Times and we wrestled with this a lot. New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott spent nearly a decade following Dasani and her family. Invisible Child So this was the enemy. 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 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. And there's a bunch of ways to look at that picture. Part of the government. People often remark on her beauty the high cheekbones and chestnut skin but their comments never seem to register. Dasanis room was where they put the crazies, she says, citing as proof the broken intercom on the wall. 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.. And in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." And one of the striking elements of the story you tell is that that's not the case in the case of the title character of Dasani. It's massively oversubscribed. Homeless services. Dasani opens a heavy metal door, stepping into the dark corridor. She attacked the mice. 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. And she just loved that. (LAUGH) I don't know what got lost in translation there. It's on the west side just west of downtown.

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