Not much. Dasani places the bottle in the microwave and presses a button. So by the time I got to Dasani's family, this was a very different situation. 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. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. Dasani squints to check the date. And yet, in cities, the fracturing happens within really close range. Ethical issues. Andrea, thank you so much. I mean, I called her every day almost for years. It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. 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. Elliott says those are the types of stories society tends to glorify because it allows us to say, if you work hard enough, if you are gifted enough, then you can beat this.. I took 14 trips to see her at Hershey. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the Pioneer Library System digital collection. 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. Chris Hayes: Once again, great thanks to Andrea Elliott. A concrete walkway leads to the lobby, which Dasani likens to a jail. She's seeing all of this is just starting to happen. She's just a visitor. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. 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 she was not at all that way with the mice. "What were you thinking in this moment? She would wake up. And that's very clear in the context of her parents here. Baby Lee-Lee has yet to learn about hunger, or any of its attendant problems. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. But at the end of the day, they are stronger than anything you throw at them. 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. If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home. She's like, "And I smashed their eyes out and I'd do this.". 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 live in Harlem. Right? If she cries, others answer. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. And to each of those, sort of, judgments, Dasani's mother has an answer. East New York still is to a certain degree, but Bed-Stuy has completely changed now. And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. Criminal justice. I have a lot of possibility. 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 was a single mother. She is always warming a bottle or soothing a cranky baby. There are more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. She is the least of Dasanis worries. 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 in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." Except for Baby Lee-Lee, who wails like a siren. And about 2,000 kids go there. Dasani, a tiny eleven-year-old girl when the book begins in 2012, has learned the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. Email withpod@gmail.com. I think about it every day. To watch these systems play out in Dasanis life is to glimpse not only their flaws, but the threat they pose to Dasanis system of survival. This is freighted by other forces beyond her control hunger, violence, unstable parenting, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. Public assistance. 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. So it was strange to her. 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. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. As Dasani walks to her new school on 6 September 2012, her heart is pounding. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. Dasanis room was where they put the crazies, she says, citing as proof the broken intercom on the wall. Part of the government. 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. And then you have to think about how to address it. She will kick them awake. In order to witness those scenes, I have to be around. 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. WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. This is typical of Dasani. And they were things that I talked about with the family a lot. Anyway, and I said, "Imagine I'm making a movie about your life. The bodegas were starting. 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. Dasanis story, which ran on the front page in late 2013, became totemic in a moment of electoral flux in New York after the election of Democrat Bill de Blasio as mayor on a She had a drug (INAUDIBLE). In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. So at the time, you know, I was at The New York Times and we wrestled with this a lot. Either give up your public assistance and you can have this money or not. The popping of gunshots. (modern). So I work very closely with audio and video tools. Her body is still small enough to warm with a hairdryer. She is 20 years old. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. Section eight, of course, is the federal rental voucher system for low income people to be able to afford housing. Why Is This Happening? is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and features music by Eddie Cooper. This is the type of fact that she recites in a singsong, look-what-I-know way. Any one of these afflictions could derail a promising child. 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 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. (LAUGH) Because they ate so much candy, often because they didn't have proper food. (LAUGH) Like those kinds of, like, cheap colognes. And we can talk about that more. And he immediately got it. Her parents were in and out of jail for theft, fights and drugs. This is an extract 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.". She made leaps ahead in math. They will drop to the floor in silence. And to her, that means doing both things keeping her family in her life while also taking strides forward, the journalist says. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. Each home at the school, they hire couples who are married who already have children to come be the house parents. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978. But, like, that's not something that just happens. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book? 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 Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. And I just spent so much time with this family and that continues to be the case. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Thats a lot on my plate.. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. I can read you the quote. And this was all very familiar to me. She lives in a house run by a married couple. And I had read it in high school. And welcome to Why Is This Happening? This is the place where people go to be free. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. 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. Andrea Elliott: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. 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 felt that she left them and this is what happened. But you know what a movie is. How did you respond? Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth She sorts them like laundry. WebRT @usaunify: When Dasani Left Home. 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. Andrea Elliott: This is a work in progress. But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. 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 So I'm really hoping that that changes. The sound that matters has a different pitch. Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. Mice scurry across the floor. Dasani would call it my spy pen. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. But the family liked the series enough to let me continue following them. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. They wound up being placed at Auburn. And a lot of that time was spent together. Her husband also had a drug history. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. I got a fork and a spoon. An interview with Andrea Elliott, author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. This was north of Fort Greene park. She would help in all kinds of ways. And my process involved them. And I did some quick research and I saw that, in fact, the child poverty rate remained one in five. A movie has characters." And a lot of things then happen after that. No. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. Best to try to blend in while not caring when you dont. And how far can I go? So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. And as I started to, kind of, go back through it, I remember thinking, "How much has really changed?" And so putting that aside, what really changed? We suffocate them with the salt!. She will tell them to shut up. Others will be distracted by the noise of this first day the start of the sixth grade, the crisp uniforms, the fresh nails. Dasani was in many ways a parent to her seven younger brothers and sisters. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and And it really was for that clientele, I believe. 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 Random House, 2021. And so you can get braces. There definitely are upsides. 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. After that, about six months after the series ran, I continued to follow them all throughout. And so I did what I often do as a journalist is I thought, "You know, let me find a universal point of connection. Yeah. 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. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. 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. I think that you're absolutely right that the difference isn't in behavior. And that gets us to 2014. You're not supposed to be watching movies. Well, every once in a while, a roach here and there in New York. Dasani's roots in Fort Greene go back for generations. And her first thought was, "Who would ever pay for water?" There are parts of it that are painful. Well, by the way, that really gets in the way of getting a job. She became the first child in her family to graduate high school and she has now entered LaGuardia Community College. But what about the ones who dont? This family is a proud family. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth Fremson , it sparked direct action from incoming Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who had Dasani on the stage at his administrations inauguration in January 2014. 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. She wants to stay in her neighborhood and with her family. And I understand the reporters who, sort of, just stop there and they describe these conditions and they're so horrifying. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. And they were, kind of, swanky. And she didn't want the streets to become her kids' family. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. 'Cause I think it's such an important point. Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. And it's the richest private school in America. It's unpredictable. Try to explain your work as much as you can." 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. She's passing through. How you get out isn't the point. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. Only their sister Dasani is awake. Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. Andrea Elliott: So Milton Hershey School was created by America's chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, who left behind no children. Theres nothing to be scared about.. 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 citys wealth has flowed to its outer edges, bringing pour-over coffee and artisanal doughnuts to places once considered gritty. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? 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.. "What's Chanel perfume? And then, of course, over time, what happens in the United States is that we become less and less materially equal. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. And you can't go there unless you're poor. The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the babys creaky stroller. You get birthday presents. And talk a little bit about just her routine, her school life. And, of course, not. Sort of, peak of the homeless crisis. The difference is in resources. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. Shes Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. Elliott says she was immediately drawn to 11-year-old Dasani not only because of the girls ability to articulate injustices in her life, but how Desani held so much promise for herself. And there's so much to say about it. The bottled water had come to Brooklyns bodegas just before she was born, catching the fancy of her mother, who could not afford such indulgences. That's what we tend to think of the homeless as. And I hope that she'll continue to feel that way. The sound of that name. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. And she would stare at the Empire State Building at the tower lights because the Empire State Building, as any New Yorker knows, lights up depending on the occasion to reflect the colors of that occasion. And it is something that I think about a lot, obviously, because I'm a practitioner as well. So that's continued to be the case since the book ended. They were-- they were eating the family's food and biting. The people I grew up with. First of all, I don't rely on my own memory. And one of the things that I've learned, of course, and this is an obvious point, is that those are very widely distributed through society. You have to be from a low income family. No, I know. 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. She doesn't want to get out. So Chanel is in Bed-Stuy. And at the same time, what if these kids ten years from now regret it? Tweet us at the hashtag #WITHPod. 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. This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. 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. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. People who have had my back since day one. In 2013, the story of a young girl named Dasani Coates took up five front pages in The New York Times. "Invisible Child" follows the story of Dasani, a young homeless girl in New York City. 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. To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. I mean, I have a lot of deep familiarity with the struggle of substance abuse in my own family. I have a lot on my plate, she likes to say, cataloging her troubles like the contents of a proper meal. And you got power out of fighting back on some level. Now you fast forward to 2001. Elliotts book follows eight years in the life of Web2 In an instant, she is midair, pulling and twisting acrobatically as the audience gasps at the might of this 12-year-old girl. She saw this ad in a glossy magazine while she was, I believe, at a medical clinic. And it was just a constant struggle between what Dasani's burdens have imposed on her and the limitless reach of her potential if she were only unburdened. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. It is a story that begins at the dawn of the 21st century, in a global financial capital riven by inequality. I feel accepted.". It wasn't a safe thing. Dasani squints to check the date. 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. It was this aspiration that was, like, so much a part of her character. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. You know, she just knew this other world was there and it existed and it did not include her. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the MontanaLibrary2Go digital collection. Journalist Andrea Elliott followed a homeless child named Dasani for almost a decade, as she navigated family trauma and a system stacked against her. Nine years ago, my colleague Andrea Elliott set out to report a series of stories about what it was like to be a homeless child in New York City. And I remember the imam's face was just, like, horrified. The ground beneath her feet once belonged to them. Theres nearly 1.38 million homeless schoolchildren in the U.S. About one in 12 live in New York City. Sometimes it'll say, like, "Happy birthday, Jay Z," or, you know. I nvisible Child is a 2021 work of nonfiction by Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative journalist Andrea Elliott. 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. (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?'. 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. 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. So this was the enemy. 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. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. It's massively oversubscribed. She wakes to the sound of breathing. One in five kids. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. And then their cover got blown and that was after the series ran. 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. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. 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. Her parents survived major childhood traumas. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? A few feet away is the yellow mop bucket they use as a toilet, and the mattress where the mother and father sleep, clutched. And I don't think she could ever recover from that. She could go anywhere. 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. Its the point Elliott says she wants to get across in Invisible Child: We need to focus less on escaping problems of poverty and pivot attention to finding the causes and solutions to those problems. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. 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 The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. We're in a new century. It's painful. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. 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. Nearly a quarter of Dasanis childhood has unfolded at Auburn, where she shares a 520-square-foot room with her parents and And that was stunning to me. You know, we're very much in one another's lives. And in all these cases, I think, like, you know, there's a duty for a journalist to tell these stories. And then I wanted to find a target in New York, a good focal point in New York. And, as she put it, "It makes me feel like something's going on out there." 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. 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. She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. But, of course, there's also the story of poverty, which has been a durable feature of American life for a very long time. 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. Her parents were struggling with a host of problems. Andrea Elliott: --it (LAUGH) because she was trying to show me how relieved she was that our brutal fact check process was over and that she didn't have to listen to me say one more line. Chris Hayes: Yeah. She would just look through the window. With only two microwaves, this can take an hour. I mean, that is one of many issues. The movies." And there's a amazing, amazing book called Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc which takes place in the Bronx, which is in a somewhat similar genre. 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. Her siblings, she was informed, were placed in foster care. Dasani's family of ten lives in one room of the Auburn Family Residence, a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. (BACKGROUND MUSIC) It is an incredible feat of reporting and writing. And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. What is crossing the line? She says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. April 17, 2014 987 words. It was a constant struggle. 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. Every once in a while, it would. 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. Then they will head outside, into the bright light of morning. At Hershey, I feel like a stranger, like I really don't belong. And, you know, this was a new school. She actually did a whole newscast for me, which I videotaped, about Barack Obama becoming the first Black president.