It never works. What I would say is that you just have to keep wrestling with it. And, of course, not. It happens because there's a lot of thought and even theory, I think, put into the practice. Theres nothing to be scared about.. It's important to not live in a silo. But she was not at all that way with the mice. Right? And they were things that I talked about with the family a lot. And it also made her indispensable to her parents, which this was a real tension from the very beginning. 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. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American 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. 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. asani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. I want people to read the book, which is gonna do a better job of this all because it's so, sort of, like, finely crafted. They have yet to stir. 'Invisible Child' chronicles how homelessness shaped And I think that that's what Dasani's story forces us to do is to understand why versus how. Child Protection Services showed up on 12 occasions. And I don't think she could ever recover from that. A changing table for babies hangs off its hinge. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Chris Hayes: That is such a profound point about the structure of American life and the aspirations for it. It was really so sweet. 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. This is typical of Dasani. Invisible Child emerged from a series on poverty Elliott wrote for the New York Times in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Auburn used to be a hospital, back when nurses tended to the dying in open wards. Thats a lot on my plate.. What did you think then?" The 10-year-olds next: Avianna, who snores the loudest, and Nana, who is going blind. Some girls may be kind enough to keep Dasanis secret. 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. 'Cause I think it's such an important point. And I could never see what the next turn would be. Well, every once in a while, a roach here and there in New York. Invisible Child And those questions just remained constantly on my mind. Chris Hayes: So she's back in the city. Invisible Child And I think what I would say is that there are no easy answers to this. Webwhat kind of cancer did nancy kulp have; nickname for someone with a short attention span; costa rican spanish accent; nitric acid and potassium hydroxide exothermic or endothermic 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'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. I think about it every day. Invisible Child Andrea Elliott Nowadays, Room 449 is a battleground. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. Tweet us at the hashtag #WITHPod. Dasani keeps forgetting to count the newest child. One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. She doesn't want to have to leave. We suffocate them with the salt!. 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 I can read you the quote. There was no sign announcing the shelter, which rises over the neighbouring projects like an accidental fortress. They were in drug treatment programs for most of the time that I was with them, mostly just trying to stay sober and often succeeding at it. And they act as their surrogate parents. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. Coca Cola had put it out a year earlier. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. And so she named her daughter Chanel. 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.. What's your relationship with her now and what's her reaction to the book? Her skyline is filled with luxury towers, the beacons of a new gilded age. She wanted to create this fortress, in a way. And regardless of our skin color, our ethnicity, our nationality, our political belief system, if you're a journalist, you're gonna cross boundaries. And through the years of American journalism, and some of the best journalism that has been produced, is about talking about what that looks like at the ground level. No. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. They're quite spatially separated from it. This is freighted by other forces beyond her control hunger, violence, unstable parenting, homelessness, drug addiction, pollution, segregated schools. The thumb-suckers first: six-year-old Hada and seven-year-old Maya, who share a small mattress. In October of 2012, I was on the investigative desk of The New York Times. And what was happening in New York was that we were reaching a kind of new level. Multiply her story by thousands of children in cities across the U.S. living through the same experiences and the country confronts a crisis. 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. And, actually, sometimes those stories are important because they raise alarms that are needed. Except for Baby Lee-Lee, who wails like a siren. 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. The other thing I would say is that we love the story of the kid who made it out. She could change diapers, pat for burps, check for fevers. Its stately neo-Georgian exterior dates back nearly a century, to when the building opened as a public hospital serving the poor. Sept. 28, 2021. But the other part is agency. She was invited to be a part of Bill de Blasio's inaugural ceremony. She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. You know, my fridge was always gonna be stocked. It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. She wakes to the sound of breathing. Whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one. Dasani, a tiny eleven-year-old girl when the book begins in 2012, has learned the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. 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. And talk a little bit about just her routine, her school life. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope And she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. Putting a face on homelessness in 'Invisible Child' | CNN She felt that the streets became her family because she had such a rocky childhood. They have yet to stir. And now, on this bright September morning, Dasani will take her grandmothers path once again, to the promising middle school two blocks away. (modern). 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. 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 She didn't know what it smelled like, but she just loved the sound of it. CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And now, we move to New York. And my process involved them. She was so tender with her turtle. Have Democrats learned them? So her principal, kind of, took her under her wing. It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. 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 And her first thought was, "Who would ever pay for water?" And so she wanted a strong army of siblings. dasani She had seven siblings. But despite the extraordinary opportunity, she talked often about just wanting to go home as troublesome as that home life was. She's at a community college. So it was strange to her. I mean, I called her every day almost for years. It is a private landmark the very place where her beloved grandmother Joanie Sykes was born, back when this was Cumberland Hospital. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. Dasani Chris Hayes: Yeah. Shes And that was a new thing for me. So I'm really hoping that that changes. New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliott spent nearly a decade following Dasani and her family. Day after day, they step through a metal detector as security guards search their bags, taking anything that could be used as a weapon a bottle of bleach, a can of Campbells soup. The only way to do this is to leave the room, which brings its own dangers. Chapter 1. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. 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. This is according to her sister, because Joanie has since passed. And I was trying to get him to agree to let me in for months at a time. 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. Different noises mean different things. We rarely look at all of the children who don't, who are just as capable. But she saw an ad for Chanel perfume. This is the type of fact that nobody can know. She made leaps ahead in math. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth He said, "Yes. She was such a remarkable and charismatic figure, and also because her story was so compelling. Delivery charges may apply, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Entire neighbourhoods would be remade, their families displaced, their businesses shuttered, their histories erased by a gentrification so vast and meteoric that no brand of bottled water could have signalled it. It was just the most devastating thing to have happened to her family. The people I grew up with. Try to explain your work as much as you can." She trots into the cafeteria, where more than a hundred families will soon stand in line to heat their prepackaged breakfast. If she cries, others answer. Knife fights break out. It comes loud and fast, with a staccato rhythm. Now the bottle must be heated. She is the least of Dasanis worries. It wasn't a safe thing. The oldest of eight kids, Dasani and her family lived in one room in a dilapidated, city-run homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Then they will head outside, into the bright light of morning. So I think that is what's so interesting is you rightly point out that we are in this fractured country now. But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. She's just a visitor. Chanel was raised on the streets and relied on family bonds, the reporter learned. 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. Like, you do an incredible job on that. She lives in a house run by a married couple. And she'd go to her window, and she talked about this a lot. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. And she became, for a moment, I wouldn't say celebrity, but a child who was being celebrated widely. Invisible Child 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. She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. Invisible Child And she talked about them brutally. I feel accepted.". And that's very clear in the context of her parents here. 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. 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. Her city is paved over theirs. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. We take the sticks and smash they eyes out! There's so much upheaval. And which she fixed. It's on the west side just west of downtown. And you didn't really have firsthand access to what it looks like, what it smells like to be wealthy. 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. Public assistance. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. And I'll get to that in a second. Invisible Child: Girl in the Shadows reportedly was the longest ever published in the newspaper up to that time. 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 a lot of that time was spent together. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. How you get out isn't the point. She had been born in March, shattering the air with her cries. Theres nearly 1.38 million homeless schoolchildren in the U.S. About one in 12 live in New York City. And then they tried to assert control. You never know with a book what its ultimate life will be in the minds of the people that you write about or a story for that matter. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. 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. 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. This family is a proud family. The street was a dangerous place. I mean, everything fell on its face. And it's, I think, a social good to do so. That's what we tend to think of the homeless as. Her name was Dasani. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. 3 Shes a giantess, the man had announced to the audience. All she has to do is climb the school steps. And then I was like, "I need to hear this. She's passing through. I just find them to be some of the most interesting people I've ever met. Andrea Elliott: Thank you so much for having me, Chris. (LAUGH), Chris Hayes: You know? She doesn't want to get out. She would walk past these boutiques where there were $800 boots for sale. This focus on language, this focus on speaking a certain way and dressing a certain way made her feel like her own family culture home was being rejected. Who paid for water in a bottle? To an outsider, living in Fort Greene, you might think, "Oh, that's the kid that lives at the homeless shelter. It's, first of all, the trust, which continues to exist and is something I think people should support. The journalist will never forget the first time she saw the family unit traveling in a single file line, with mother Chanel Sykes leading the way as she pushed a stroller. The rap of a security guards knuckles on the door. 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. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. But you know what a movie is. Editor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on May 16, 2022. East New York still is to a certain degree, but Bed-Stuy has completely changed now. Dasani Coates photographed in September last year. Now the bottle must be heated. Catholic Daily Mass - Daily TV Mass - April 23, 2023 - Facebook So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? No, I know. Where do you first encounter her in the city? Tweet us with the hashtag #WITHpod, email WITHpod@gmail.com. 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. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? This was and continues to be their entire way of being, their whole reason. Dasani's roots in Fort Greene go back for generations. And at that time, I just had my second child and I was on leave at home in Washington, D.C. where I had grown up. Invisible Child Thank you! We're gonna both pretend we've seen movies. They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. When she left New York City, her loved ones lost a crucial member of the family, and in her absence, things fell apart. They will drop to the floor in silence. So she's taking some strides forward. WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. Had been the subject of tremendous amounts of redlining and disinvestment and panic peddling that had essentially chased white homeowners out. Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series Invisible Child chronicles the ongoing struggles of homelessness, which passes from one generation to the next in Dasanis family. She is 20 years old. And she just loved that. And a lot of the reporting was, "But tell me how you reacted to this. Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. 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. So you mentioned There Are No Children Here. 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. The book is called Invisible Child. She would then start to feed the baby. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. Her siblings will soon be scrambling to get dressed and make their beds before running to the cafeteria to beat the line. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? Family wasn't an accident. This book is filled with twists and turns, as is her story. 'Invisible Child' and childhood homelessness; Implants to 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. You're not supposed to be watching movies. Elliott spent Book Review: Invisible Child, by Andrea Elliott - The New York It's just not in the formal labor market. Clothing donations. 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 are seeing the other. You know? And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. And just exposure to diversity is great for anyone. "What's Chanel perfume? And a few years back, there was this piece about a single girl in the New York City public school system in The New York Times that was really I think brought people up shore, 'cause it was so well done. This is a pivotal, pivotal decade for Brooklyn. 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.
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