CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. And regardless of our skin color, our ethnicity, our nationality, our political belief system, if you're a journalist, you're gonna cross boundaries. The mouse-infested shelter didnt deter Dasani from peeking out her windowsill every morning to catch a glimpse of the Empire State Building. She has a full wardrobe provided to her. Thats not gonna be me, she says. But with Shaka Ritashata (PH), I remember using all of the, sort of, typical things that we say as journalists. And so I have seen my siblings struggle for decades with it and have periods of sobriety and then relapse. What is that?" 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. Their voucher had expired. Chris Hayes: So she's back in the city. With only two microwaves, this can take an hour. Andrea, thank you so much. She would just look through the window. They will drop to the floor in silence. One in five kids. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. 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. And it was an extraordinary experience. 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?' Roaches crawl to the ceiling. Right? And I had avoided it. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. Chris Hayes: Yeah. Section eight, of course, is the federal rental voucher system for low income people to be able to afford housing. How did you respond? I saw in Supreme and in Chanel a lot of the signs of someone who is self-medicating. And that's just the truth. Dasani keeps forgetting to count the newest child. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book? 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. 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 they did attend rehab at times. 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. She never even went inside. 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. I think she feels that the book was able to go to much deeper places and that that's a good thing. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. And so they had a choice. It doesn't have to be a roof over my head. Where do you first encounter her in the city? So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? She's like, "And I smashed their eyes out and I'd do this.". Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. You're gonna get out of your own lane and go into other worlds. She's been through this a little bit before, right, with the series. And in the very beginning, I was like, "Oh, I don't think I can hear this." Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. It's important to not live in a silo. Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. Andrea Elliott: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. This is a story." She was just one of those kids who had so many gifts that it made her both promising in the sense of she could do anything with her life. Part of the government. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. To be poor in a rich city brings all kinds of ironies, perhaps none greater than this: the donated clothing is top shelf. Now you fast forward to 2001. "This is so and so." The west side of Chicago is predominantly Black and Latino and very poor. People who have had my back since day one. 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. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. On mornings like this, she can see all the way past Brooklyn, over the rooftops and the projects and the shimmering East River. (LAUGH) Because they ate so much candy, often because they didn't have proper food. That's what we tend to think of the homeless as. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. So this was the enemy. They dwell within Dasani wherever she goes. And a lot of things then happen after that. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978. Each home at the school, they hire couples who are married who already have children to come be the house parents. She would help in all kinds of ways. Andrea Elliott: Absolutely. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. Sometimes she doesnt have to blink. 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. Andrea joins to talk about her expanded coverage of the Coates family story, which is told in her new book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope In An American City.. Criminal justice. The ground beneath her feet once belonged to them. Shes tomorrows success, Im telling you right now.. After that, about six months after the series ran, I continued to follow them all throughout. Her polo shirt and khakis have been pressed with a hair straightener, because irons are forbidden at the Auburn shelter. And just exposure to diversity is great for anyone. The problems of poverty are so much greater, so much more overwhelming than the power of being on the front page of The New York Times. New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott spent nearly a decade following Dasani and her family. 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. 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. She wants to stay in her neighborhood and with her family. The pounding of fists. Nowadays, Room 449 is a battleground. And it's the richest private school in America. Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. WebA work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott's Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. There are more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. Like, these two things that I think we tend to associate with poverty and, particularly, homelessness, which is mental illness and substance abuse, which I think get--, Chris Hayes: --very much, particularly in the way that in an urban environment, get codified in your head of, like, people who were out and, you know, they're dealing with those two issues and this is concentrated. Her eyes can travel into Manhattan, to the top of the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach a hundred floors. The Milton Hershey School is an incredible, incredible place. And that really cracked me up because any true New Yorker likes to brag about the quality of our tap water. You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. Andrea Elliott: Okay. Dasani landed at 39 Auburn Place more than two years ago. 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 I was so struck by many things about her experience of growing up poor. 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. Dasani's 20. But when you remove her from the family system, this was predictable that the family would struggle, because she was so essential to that. And, actually, sometimes those stories are important because they raise alarms that are needed. Elliott first met Dasani, her parents and her siblings in Brooklyns Fort Greene neighborhood in 2012. "Invisible Child" follows the story of Dasani, a young homeless girl in New York City. WebBrowse, borrow, and enjoy titles from the PALS Plus NJ OverDrive Library digital collection. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. If she cries, others answer. So it's interesting how, you know, you always see what's happening on the street first before you see it 10,000 feet above the ground in terms of policy or other things. And how far can I go? Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series Mice scurry across the floor. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Right? What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. To follow Dasani, as she comes of age, is also to follow her seven siblings. That, to be honest, is really home. 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. As Dasani grows up, she must contend with them all. And then their cover got blown and that was after the series ran. So Bed-Stuy, East New York. And in my local bodega, they suddenly recently added, I just noticed this last night, organic milk. She knows such yearnings will go unanswered. They have learned to sleep through anything. The popping of gunshots. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. But she was so closely involved in my process. So thats a lot on my plate with some cornbread. Sleek braids fall to one side of Dasanis face, clipped by yellow bows. She attacked the mice. Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. Ethical issues. Chris Hayes: Yeah. An interview with Andrea Elliott, author of Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. But I met her standing outside of that shelter. Baby Lee-Lee has yet to learn about hunger, or any of its attendant problems. Only their sister Dasani is awake. She is the least of Dasanis worries. You know, my fridge was always gonna be stocked. 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. And she said that best in her own words. And they were things that I talked about with the family a lot. Now the bottle must be heated. Shes not alone. In Fort Greene alone, in that first decade, we saw the portion of white residents jump up by 80%. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. I felt that it was really, really important to explain my process to this imam, in particular, who I spent six months with, who had come from Egypt and had a very different sense of the press, which was actually a tool of oppression. But I know that I tried very, very hard at every step to make sure it felt as authentic as possible to her, because there's a lot of descriptions of how she's thinking about things. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. 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 that's really true of the poor. So I work very closely with audio and video tools. To support the Guardian and the Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. 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. We take the sticks and smash they eyes out! And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. (modern). 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 Like, she was wearing Uggs at one point and a Patagonia fleece at another point. The people I hang out with. And this is a current that runs through this family, very much so, as you can see by the names. 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. Sort of, peak of the homeless crisis. But she was not at all that way with the mice. But the other part is agency. 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. She's pregnant with Dasani, 2001. All you could buy at the local bodega at that time was Charlie. And we're gonna talk a little bit about what that number is and how good that definition is. And this was all very familiar to me. And then I was like, "I need to hear this. 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 had an early experience of this with Muslim immigrant communities in the United States that I reported on for years. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. . It's a really, really great piece of work. First of all, Dasani landed there in 2010 because her family had been forced out of their section eight rental in Staten Island. ", I think if we look at Dasani's trajectory, we see a different kind of story. She then moved from there to a shelter in Harlem and then to a shelter in the Bronx before finally, once again, landing another section eight voucher and being able to move back into a home with her family. Dasani races back upstairs, handing her mother the bottle. We could have a whole podcast about this one (LAUGH) issue. And part of the reason I think that is important is because the nature of the fracturing (LAUGH) of American society is such that as we become increasingly balkanized, there's a kind of spacial separation that happens along class lines. Dasani's family of ten lives in one room of the Auburn Family Residence, a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. She actually did a whole newscast for me, which I videotaped, about Barack Obama becoming the first Black president. And what was happening in New York was that we were reaching a kind of new level. When braces are the stuff of fantasy, straight teeth are a lottery win. In 2012, there were 22,000 homeless children in New York City. She could even tell the difference between a cry for hunger and a cry for sleep. And as prosperity rose for one group of people, poverty deepened for another, leaving Dasani to grow up true to her name in a novel kind of place. Elliott picks up the story in Invisible Child , a book that goes well beyond her original reporting in both journalistic excellence and depth of insight. Like, you do an incredible job on that. She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. 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. What happens when trying to escape poverty means separating from your family at 13? They are true New Yorkers. Every inch of the room is claimed. ANDREA ELLIOTT, She was such a remarkable and charismatic figure, and also because her story was so compelling. So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. 3 Shes a giantess, the man had announced to the audience. And she sees a curious thing on the shelf of her local bodega. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. Thank you! 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. And she just loved that. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and Find that audio here. 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. Dasani is not an anomaly. Her parents are avid readers. 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. The other thing you asked about were the major turning points. So I think that is what's so interesting is you rightly point out that we are in this fractured country now. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the babys creaky stroller. And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. And so it would break the rules. Chanel thought of 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. 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. It's called Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City. 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. Every once in a while, it would. 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. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. Still, the baby howls. For a time, she thrived there. And, you know, this was a new school. They just don't have a steady roof over their head. We rarely look at all of the children who don't, who are just as capable. 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 A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. So it was strange to her. 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 her lips are stained with green lollipop. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. Only a mother could answer it, and for a while their mother was gone. Try to explain your work as much as you can." WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City.
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