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. And what really got me interested, I think, in shifting gears was in the end of 2011, Occupy Wall Street happened. This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. Delivery charges may apply, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. And she wants to be able to thrive there. And I think that that's also what she would say. 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?' Her parents were struggling with a host of problems. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. They did not get the help that many upper middle class Americans would take for granted, whether it's therapy, whether it's medication, whether it's rehab. Her eyes can travel into Manhattan, to the top of the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach a hundred floors. Shes tomorrows success, Im telling you right now.. And I had read it in high school. And it's, I think, a social good to do so. It's just not in the formal labor market. 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 And she didn't want the streets to become her kids' family. This is an extract from Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City by Andrea Elliott (Hutchinson Heinemann, 16.99). She's transient." And I was so struck by many things about her experience of growing up poor. 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. 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. It's a really, really great piece of work. 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. What's interesting about that compared to Dasani, just in terms of what, sort of, concentrated poverty is like in the 1980s, I think, when that book is being reported in her is that proximity question. 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. 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. The people I hang out with. 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. I took 14 trips to see her at Hershey. The people I grew up with. But the family liked the series enough to let me continue following them. One in five kids. Mice scurry across the floor. Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. Now the bottle must be heated. 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. Whenever I'm with Chanel, Dasani, Supreme, any of the kids, I'm captivated by them. Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. And yet, in cities, the fracturing happens within really close range. She lasted more than another year. It is a private landmark the very place where her beloved grandmother Joanie Sykes was born, back when this was Cumberland Hospital. East New York still is to a certain degree, but Bed-Stuy has completely changed now. And which she fixed. 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. And she talked about them brutally. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? Best to try to blend in while not caring when you dont. And that's really true of the poor. I mean, I think everyone knows there are a lot of poor people, particularly a lot of poor people in urban centers, although there are a lot of poor people in rural areas. This is the type of fact that she recites in a singsong, look-what-I-know way. Still, the baby howls. Then Jim Ester and the photographer (LAUGH) who was working with me said, "We just want to shadow you.". Eleven-year-old Dasani Joanie-Lashawn Coates is a primary caregiver for her seven siblings. They follow media carefully. Now you are a very halal Muslim leader. Lee-Lees cry was something else. 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.. But especially to someone like her, who she was struggling. 11:12 - Only a mother could answer it, and for a while their mother was gone. And this book really avoids it. And that was not available even a month ago. She felt that the streets became her family because she had such a rocky childhood. But the spacial separation of Chicago means that they're not really cheek and jowl next to, you know, $3 million town homes or anything like that. 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. 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. 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. Andrea Elliott: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. The brothers last: five-year-old Papa and 11-year-old Khaliq, who have converted their metal bunk into a boys-only fort. Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. And you can't go there unless you're poor. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. 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. Right? Bed bugs. A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. I think it's so natural for an outsider to be shocked by the kind of conditions that Dasani was living in. And at one level, it's like, "It's our ethical duty to tell stories honestly and forcefully and truthfully." Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. You have to be from a low income family. Part of the government. Ethical issues. Among them is Dasanis birthplace, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where renovated townhouses come with landscaped gardens and heated marble floors. 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. 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 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 The street was a dangerous place. And for most of us, I would say, family is so important. This family is a proud family. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Try to explain your work as much as you can." And that didn't go over well because he just came (LAUGH) years ago from Egypt. Mice scurry across the floor. 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. She was doing so well. Like, she was wearing Uggs at one point and a Patagonia fleece at another point. I think that when you get deeper inside and when you start to really try your best to understand on a more intimate level what those conditions mean for the person that you're writing about, so you stop imposing your outsider lens, although it's always gonna be there and you must be aware of it, and you try to allow for a different perspective. Journalist Andrea Elliott followed a homeless child named Dasani for almost a decade, as she navigated family trauma and a system stacked against her. Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. Like, you could tell the story about Jeff Bezos sending himself into space. Nuh-uh. And they were, kind of, swanky. Dasani landed at 39 Auburn Place more than two years ago. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. Named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyns gentrification, her story has been featured in five front pages of the New York Times. This is freighted by other forces beyond her control hunger, violence, unstable parenting, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. And so she wanted a strong army of siblings. We burn them! Dasani says with none of the tenderness reserved for her turtle. We just had all these meetings in the newsroom about what to do because the story was unfolding and it was gripping. But what about the ones who dont? Her parents were in and out of jail for theft, fights and drugs. Each home at the school, they hire couples who are married who already have children to come be the house parents. Jane Clayson Guest Host, Here & NowJane Clayson is Here & Now's guest host. How you get out isn't the point. And, of course, children aren't the face of the homeless. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by the All In team and features music by Eddie Cooper. On mornings like this, she can see all the way past Brooklyn, over the rooftops and the projects and the shimmering East River. he wakes to the sound of breathing. 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. And, yeah, maybe talk a little bit about what that experience is like for her. Chris Hayes: Yeah. She's seeing all of this is just starting to happen. On a good day, Dasani walks like she is tall, her chin held high. This family is a family that prides itself on so many things about its system as a family, including its orderliness. 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. She was so tender with her turtle. April 17, 2014 987 words. It's massively oversubscribed. 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. 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. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. 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 there's so much to say about it. 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. 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. Anyway, and I said, "Imagine I'm making a movie about your life. Nearly a quarter of her childhood has unfolded at the Auburn Family Residence, where Dasanis family a total of 10 people live in one room. She wants to stay in her neighborhood and with her family. Family wasn't an accident. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. Well, by the way, that really gets in the way of getting a job. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? This is so important." So I work very closely with audio and video tools. Sept. 28, 2021. This is a story." And you didn't really have firsthand access to what it looks like, what it smells like to be wealthy. WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. She never even went inside. But under court supervision, he had remained with the children, staying clean while his wife entered a drug treatment programme. 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. Before that, she had been in and out of shelters with her family. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. Nowadays, Room 449 is a battleground. She doesn't want to have to leave. What was striking to me was how little changed. And even up until 2018 was the last study that I saw that looked at this, that looked at the city's own poverty measure, which takes into account things like food stamps and stuff, nearly half of New York City residents, even as late as 2018, were living near or below the poverty line in a city that is so defined by wealth. . Only their sister Dasani is awake. To kill a mouse is to score a triumph. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours, Elliott says. 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. To follow Dasani, as she comes of age, is also to follow her seven siblings. Her name was Dasani. This is where she derives her greatest strength. She's had major ups and major downs. I had not ever written a book. Some donations came in. And how far can I go? They're quite spatially separated from it. But, like, that's not something that just happens. And the translator would translate and was actually showing this fly. 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 attacked the mice. Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. It's in resources. Andrea Elliott: Okay. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? Nonetheless, she landed on the honor roll that fall. She could go anywhere. She changed diapers, fed them and took them to school. It's on the west side just west of downtown. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. We break their necks. Knife fights break out. I feel accepted.". Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. 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. 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. 6. 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. Her city is paved over theirs. I nvisible Child is a 2021 work of nonfiction by Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative journalist Andrea Elliott. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. 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. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the MontanaLibrary2Go digital collection. "What's Chanel perfume? They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. Dasani races back upstairs, handing her mother the bottle. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. And that's just the truth. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. 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. Well, every once in a while, a roach here and there in New York. And I just spent so much time with this family and that continues to be the case. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. And it's the richest private school in America. 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. No, I know. (modern). We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. Tweet us at the hashtag #WITHPod. She is a child of 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. They were put in a situation where things were out of their control. It's available wherever you get your books. And then I was like, "I need to hear this. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. Like, these are--. At that time when I met her when she was 11, Dasani would wake around 5 a.m. and the first thing she did, she always woke before all of her other siblings. She just thought, "Who could afford that?". By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. 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 And unemployed. All you could buy at the local bodega at that time was Charlie. Nope.. Her parents survived major childhood traumas. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the PALS Plus NJ OverDrive Library digital collection. It doesn't have to be a roof over my head. More often she is running to the monkey bars, to the library, to the A train that her grandmother cleaned for a living. 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. Dasani's roots in Fort Greene go back for generations. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. It's told in her newest book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. Her sense of home has always been so profound even though she's homeless. But you know what a movie is. Like, I would love to meet a woman who's willing to go through childbirth for just a few extra dollars on your food stamp benefits (LAUGH) that's not even gonna last the end of the month." Like, "Why do I have to say, 'Isn't,' instead of, 'Ain't'?" And, really, the difference is, like, the kind of safety nets, the kind of resources, the kind of access people have--. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth Dasani described the familys living quarters as so cramped, it was like 10 people trying to breathe in the same room and they only give you five windows, Elliott recalls. And I just wonder, like, how you thought about it as you went through this project. And a lot of the reporting was, "But tell me how you reacted to this. Dasani places the bottle in the microwave and presses a button. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. And at first, she thrived. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. Web2 In an instant, she is midair, pulling and twisting acrobatically as the audience gasps at the might of this 12-year-old girl. The sound of that name. She spent eight years falling the story It is a story that begins at the dawn of the 21st century, in a global financial capital riven by inequality. But to Dasani, the shelter is far more than a random assignment. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. I mean, that is one of many issues. Where is Dasani now? Section eight, of course, is the federal rental voucher system for low income people to be able to afford housing. 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 Why Is This Happening? is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Doni Holloway and features music by Eddie Cooper. She had a lot of issues. We're in a new century. It is on the fourth floor of that shelter, at a window facing north, that Dasani now sits looking out. It's why do so many not? Hershey likes to say that it wants to be the opposite of a legacy school, that if your kids qualify, that means that the school hasn't done its job, 'cause its whole purpose is to lift children out of poverty. Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. Sleek braids fall to one side of Dasanis face, clipped by yellow bows. 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 is an extract You find her outside this shelter. And now, on this bright September morning, Dasani will take her grandmothers path once again, to the promising middle school two blocks away. The book is called Invisible Child. 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. Laundry piled up. Parental neglect, failure to provide necessities for ones children like shelter or clothing, is one form of child maltreatment that differs from child abuse, she says. 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. Now the bottle must be heated. She counts her siblings in pairs, just like her mother said. 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. You know, we're very much in one another's lives. WebRT @usaunify: When Dasani Left Home. And in all these cases, I think, like, you know, there's a duty for a journalist to tell these stories. In the dim chaos of Room 449, she struggles to find Lee-Lees formula, which is donated by the shelter but often expired. The other thing you asked about were the major turning points. 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. 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. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. If she cries, others answer. Dasani is not an anomaly. And she wanted to beat them for just a few minutes in the morning of quiet by getting up before them. Sometimes it'll say, like, "Happy birthday, Jay Z," or, you know. So I'm really hoping that that changes. And she just loved that. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. Chanel. (LAUGH) And the market produces massively too little affordable housing, which is in some ways part of the story of Dasani and her family, which is the city doesn't have enough affordable housing. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. Almost half of New Yorks 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. Just a few blocks from townhouses that were worth millions of dollars. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. The popping of gunshots. The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. 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 It's, first of all, the trust, which continues to exist and is something I think people should support.
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