She was often tired. I nvisible Child is a 2021 work of nonfiction by Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative journalist Andrea Elliott. And that's very clear in the context of her parents here. And I think showing the dignity within these conditions is part of that other lens. What is crossing the line? In the blur of the citys streets, Dasani is just another face. Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. She said, "Home is the people. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. No, I know. Ethical issues. And he didn't really understand what my purpose was. They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. The other thing I would say is that we love the story of the kid who made it out. The book takes on poverty, homelessness, racism, addiction, hunger, and more as they shape the lives of one remarkable girl and her family. She is the least of Dasanis worries. Their sister is always first. This week, an expansion of her reporting comes out within the pages of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City.. Elliotts book follows eight years in the life of Just the sound of it Dasani conjured another life. 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. Nuh-uh. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. Right? I think about it every day. is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In team and features music by Eddie Cooper. 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. 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. It's told in her newest book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. 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. Invisible Child And that's really true of the poor. So that's continued to be the case since the book ended. An interview with Andrea Elliott, author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. And so you can get braces. She will kick them awake. It comes loud and fast, with a staccato rhythm. Yes. 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. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. She actually did a whole newscast for me, which I videotaped, about Barack Obama becoming the first Black president. She lasted more than another year. 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. Of all the distressing moments in Invisible Child, Andrea Elliotts book about Dasani Coates, the oldest of eight children growing up in a homeless shelter in New Only a mother could answer it, and for a while their mother was gone. 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. I have a lot of things to say: one girls life growing up homeless in 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. And you got power out of fighting back on some level. Well, by the way, that really gets in the way of getting a job. 'Invisible Child' chronicles how homelessness shaped Note: This is a rough transcript please excuse any typos. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. 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.. I feel good. 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: 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. She is forever in motion, doing backflips at the bus stop, dancing at the welfare office. But despite the extraordinary opportunity, she talked often about just wanting to go home as troublesome as that home life was. 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. She could go anywhere. Andrea Elliott on Twitter We often focus on the stories of children who make it out of tumultuous environments. And talk a little bit about just her routine, her school life. Elliott spent But I think she just experienced such an identity crisis and she felt so much guilt. Sometimes it'll say, like, "Happy birthday, Jay Z," or, you know. Had been the subject of tremendous amounts of redlining and disinvestment and panic peddling that had essentially chased white homeowners out. 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. The people I hang out with. Chris Hayes: Yeah. But especially to someone like her, who she was struggling. Child protection. Serena McMahonadapted it for the web. For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. And she also struggled with having to act differently. Clothing donations. Hidden in a box is Dasanis pet turtle, kept alive with bits of baloney and the occasional Dorito. 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. And she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. Over the next year, 911 dispatchers will take some 350 calls from Auburn, logging 24 reports of assault, four reports of child abuse, and one report of rape. Mice were running everywhere. I still have it. Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on May 16, 2022. But nonetheless, my proposal was to focus on Dasani and on her siblings, on children. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. We take the sticks and smash they eyes 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. It's unpredictable. And how far can I go? Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. And then I wanted to find a target in New York, a good focal point in New York. Section eight, of course, is the federal rental voucher system for low income people to be able to afford housing. There were evictions. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. And, of course, children aren't the face of the homeless. But the other part is agency. It's in resources. And it's, I think, a social good to do so. She would change her diaper. But nothing like this. 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. She trots into the cafeteria, where more than a hundred families will soon stand in line to heat their prepackaged breakfast. Dasani places the bottle in the microwave and presses a button. Right? I think that you're absolutely right that the difference isn't in behavior. She was an amazing ethnographer and she and I had many conversations about what she called the asymmetry of power, that is this natural asymmetry that's built into any academic subject, reporter subject relationship. And by the way, at that time this was one of the richest cities in the world. Dasani would call it my spy pen. What was striking to me was how little changed. Shes We rarely look at all the children who don't, who are just as capable. And that didn't go over well because he just came (LAUGH) years ago from Egypt. Of all the distressing moments in Invisible Child, Andrea Elliotts book about Dasani Coates, the oldest of eight children growing up in a homeless shelter in New Her siblings will soon be scrambling to get dressed and make their beds before running to the cafeteria to beat the line. 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.. Then Jim Ester and the photographer (LAUGH) who was working with me said, "We just want to shadow you.". This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. Serena McMahon Twitter Digital ProducerSerena McMahon was a digital producer for Here & Now. There was no sign announcing the shelter, which rises over the neighbouring projects like an accidental fortress. Now you are a very halal Muslim leader. She says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. And I hope that she'll continue to feel that way. There are parts of it that are painful. The mouse-infested shelter didnt deter Dasani from peeking out her windowsill every morning to catch a glimpse of the Empire State Building. 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. Except for Baby Lee-Lee, who wails like a siren. She wants to stay in her neighborhood and with her family. This is a pivotal, pivotal decade for Brooklyn. She is always warming a bottle or soothing a cranky baby. She would wake up. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Different noises mean different things. She was so tender with her turtle. 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. 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?" This is usually the sound that breaks Dasanis trance, causing her to leave the window and fetch Lee-Lees bottle. 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. 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. Her mother, Chanel Sykes, went as a child, leaving Brooklyn on a bus for Pittsburgh to escape the influence of a crack-addicted parent. It's still too new of a field of research to say authoritatively what the impact is, good or bad, of gentrification on long term residents who are lower income. At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. Tempers explode. Mothers shower quickly, posting their children as lookouts for the buildings predators. Some donations came in. 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. She doesn't want to get out. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. She's studying business administration, which has long been her dream. Invisible Child By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. A movie has characters." It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth Her siblings are her greatest solace; their separation her greatest fear. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. And I just spent so much time with this family and that continues to be the case. Actually, I'd had some opportunities, but I was never in love with a story like this one. The book is called Invisible Child. Invisible Child And she just loved that. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. Her name was Dasani. 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. To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. 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. (LAUGH) Because they ate so much candy, often because they didn't have proper food. And that was stunning to me. Then she sets about her chores, dumping the mop bucket, tidying her dresser, and wiping down the small fridge. 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, 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. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. Like, you do an incredible job on that. They think, "All men are created equal," creed is what distinguishes the U.S., what gives it its, sort of, moral force and righteousness in rebelling against the crown. 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. And so they had a choice. Nope.. 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 It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. It's something that I have wrestled with from the very beginning and continue to throughout. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. Anyway, and I said, "Imagine I'm making a movie about your life. But what about the ones who dont? But the family liked the series enough to let me continue following them. Chris Hayes: --to dealing with those. Dasani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. I mean, everything fell on its face. Invisible Child But she was not at all that way with the mice. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. 'Invisible Child' chronicles how homelessness shaped I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. Invisible Child This book is filled with twists and turns, as is her story. Whenever I'm with Chanel, Dasani, Supreme, any of the kids, I'm captivated by them. Now you fast forward to 2001. And I have this pen that's called live scribe and it records sound while I'm writing. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. 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. They will drop to the floor in silence. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. You have piano lessons and tutoring and, of course, academics and all kinds of athletic resources. You just invest time. Her parents are avid readers. So it was strange to her. There are a lot of different gradations of what that poverty looks like. It is a story that begins at the dawn of the 21st century, in a global financial capital riven by inequality. How did you respond? Chanel thought of Dasani. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. 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. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. One in five kids. She made leaps ahead in math. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. She was such a remarkable and charismatic figure, and also because her story was so compelling. And, yeah, maybe talk a little bit about what that experience is like for her. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and This is the type of fact that nobody can know. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. 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. So you mentioned There Are No Children Here. That's what we tend to think of the homeless as. Not much. And those questions just remained constantly on my mind. 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 And there's so much to say about it. We're gonna both pretend we've seen movies. WebInvisible Child, highlights the life struggles of eleven-year-old Dasani Coates, a homeless child living with her family in Brooklyn, New York. 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. 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 my process involved them. Andrea Elliott: Absolutely. I saw in Supreme and in Chanel a lot of the signs of someone who is self-medicating. Each spot is routinely swept and sprayed with bleach and laid with mousetraps. Tweet us with the hashtag #WITHpod, email WITHpod@gmail.com. This is typical of Dasani. 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. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. She ends up there. Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. She calls him Daddy. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. 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. And you didn't really have firsthand access to what it looks like, what it smells like to be wealthy. With only two microwaves, this can take an hour. It was really so sweet. 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. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? We suffocate them with the salt!. And then they tried to assert control. She just thought, "Who could afford that?". 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. By the time I got to Dasani's family, I had that stack and I gave it to them. On one side are the children, on the other the rodents their carcasses numbering up to a dozen per week. And so it would break the rules. 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 be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: the donated clothing is top shelf. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. You know? "Invisible Child" follows the story of Dasani, a young homeless girl in New York City. (LAUGH) I don't know what got lost in translation there. 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. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978.