Now the bottle must be heated. Her parents were in and out of jail for theft, fights and drugs. She doesn't want to have to leave. Serena McMahon Twitter Digital ProducerSerena McMahon was a digital producer for Here & Now. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. It never works. 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. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and What Hershey calls code switching, which is you switch between the norms, the linguistic codes, and behaviors of one place to another so that you can move within both worlds or many worlds. And I did some quick research and I saw that, in fact, the child poverty rate remained one in five. No. And then they tried to assert control. 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 Dasani, a tiny eleven-year-old girl when the book begins in 2012, has learned the responsibility of caring for her younger siblings. They rarely figure among the panhandlers, bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts. 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's roots in Fort Greene go back for generations. The bodegas were starting. Her parents are avid readers. I think what she has expressed to me, I can certainly repeat. 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. Had been the subject of tremendous amounts of redlining and disinvestment and panic peddling that had essentially chased white homeowners out. I have a lot of possibility. And which she fixed. She will be sure to take a circuitous route home, traipsing two extra blocks to keep her address hidden. She says, "I would love to meet," you know, anyone who accuses her of being a quote, unquote welfare queen. (LAUGH) Because they ate so much candy, often because they didn't have proper food. 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. She's at a community college. Family wasn't an accident. So let's start with what was your beat at the time when you wrote the first story? Where do you first encounter her in the city? She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. Invisible Child: Dasanis Homeless Life. A few feet away is the yellow mop bucket they use as a toilet, and the mattress where the mother and father sleep, clutched. So she lived in that shelter for over three years. Family was everything for them. I was around a lot of folks like Lee Ann Fujii, who passed away. "I just want to be a fly on the wall. The2009 financial crisis taught us hard lessons. This is the place where people go to be free. 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. So I'm really hoping that that changes. 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 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. I had been there for a while. Dasani Coates grew up in a family so poor, her stepfather once pawned his gold teeth to get by until their welfare benefits arrived. And for most of us, I would say, family is so important. We're in a new century. The sound that matters has a different pitch. The turtle they had snuck into the shelter. I had spent years as a journalist entering into communities where I did not immediately belong or seem to belong as an outsider. And the translator would translate and was actually showing this fly. Serena McMahonadapted it for the web. So to what extent did Dasani show agency within this horrible setting? 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. 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. Criminal justice. Thank you! 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. It was incredibly confusing as a human being to go from their world back into mine on the Upper West Side in my rental with my kids who didn't have to worry about roaches. Dasani is not an anomaly. Don't their future adult selves have a right to privacy (LAUGH) in a sense? And you just have to know that going in and never kid yourself that it has shifted. 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. She wakes to the sound of breathing. Now you are a very halal Muslim leader. Where is Dasani now? They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. St. Patty's Day, green and white. Shes 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 Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. 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. Shes creating life on her own terms, Elliott says. Andrea Elliott: I didn't really have a beat. In the blur of the citys streets, Dasani is just another face. with me, your host, Chris Hayes. But I would say that at the time, the parents saw that trust as an obstacle to any kind of real improvement because they couldn't access it because donors didn't want money going into the hands of parents with a drug history and also because they did continue to receive public assistance. This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. But to Dasani, the shelter is far more than a random assignment. Chris Hayes: Dasani is 11 years old. She knew she had to help get her siblings fed and dressed. Andrea Elliott: We love the story of the kid who made it out. Andrea Elliott: This is a work in progress. Andrea Elliott is a investigative reporter at The New York Times, (BACKGROUND MUSIC) a Pulitzer Prize winner. I feel good. You're not supposed to be watching movies. And it's a little bit like her own mother had thought. Andrea Elliott: So at the end of the five days that it took for me to read the book to Dasani, when we got to the last line, she said, "That's the last line?" 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. Part of the government. She never even went inside. And I was trying to get him to agree to let me in for months at a time. Chris Hayes: --real tropes (LAUGH) of this genre. She is a child of New York City. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. People often remark on her beauty the high cheekbones and chestnut skin but their comments never seem to register. They have learned to sleep through anything. She is 20 years old. Chris Hayes: Yeah. We suffocate them with the salt!. 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.. And that's really true of the poor. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequalitytold through the crucible of one remarkable girl. And this ultimately wound up in the children being removed in October of 2015, about ten months into Dasani's time at Hershey. Born at And I understand the reporters who, sort of, just stop there and they describe these conditions and they're so horrifying. Only together have they learned to navigate povertys systems ones with names suggesting help. Whenever this happens, Dasani starts to count. Come on, says her mother, Chanel, who stands next to Dasani. Best to try to blend in while not caring when you dont. Try to explain your work as much as you can." Now the bottle must be heated. US kids' Christmas letters take heartbreaking turn. And she talked about them brutally. Still, the baby howls. I have a lot on my plate, she likes to say, cataloging her troubles like the contents of a proper meal. Andrea Elliott: Okay. Two sweeping sycamores shade the entrance, where smokers linger under brick arches. I feel accepted.". She fixes her gaze on that distant temple, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise. Dasani squints to check the date. Only a mother could answer it, and for a while their mother was gone. And we can talk about that more. She ends up there. 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. Her parents were struggling with a host of problems. Then she sets about her chores, dumping the mop bucket, tidying her dresser, and wiping down the small fridge. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. The mouse-infested shelter didnt deter Dasani from peeking out her windowsill every morning to catch a glimpse of the Empire State Building. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. 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. They have yet to stir. 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. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. I read the book out to the girls. 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. But, of course, there's also the story of poverty, which has been a durable feature of American life for a very long time. And so it would break the rules. 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. (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?'. Back then, from the ghettos isolated corners, a perfume ad seemed like the portal to a better place. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in Dasanis words, my heart. Right? Random House, 2021. 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. I got rice, chicken, macaroni. The fork and spoon are her parents and the macaroni her siblings - except for Baby Lee-Lee, who is a plump chicken breast. I had not ever written a book. It is also a story that reaches back in time to one Black family making its way through history, from slavery to the Jim Crow South and then the Great Migrations passage north. She is tiny for an 11-year-old and quick to startle. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. WebInvisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City. By the time most schoolchildren in New York City are waking up to go to school, Dasani had been working for probably two hours. Here in the neighbourhood, the homeless are the lowest caste, the outliers, the shelter boogies. She spent eight years falling the story of Dasani Coates. And at the same time, what if these kids ten years from now regret it? And she just loved that. Dasani squints to check the date. She lives in a house run by a married couple. She loved to sit on her windowsill. And that gets us to 2014. And she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. And there's a bunch of ways to look at that picture. And to her, that means doing both things keeping her family in her life while also taking strides forward, the journalist says. Massive gentrification occurs in this first decade. And this book really avoids it. It's something that I talked about a lot with Supreme and Chanel. Children are not the face of New Yorks homeless. Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. Mice scurry across the floor. She spent eight years falling the story Every once in a while, it would. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. And I consider family to be Dasani's ultimate, sort of, system of survival. The pounding of fists. And by the way, at that time this was one of the richest cities in the world. Columbias Bill Grueskin tries to explain why the Pulitzer board dismissed The New York Times s Invisible Child series There's a huge separation that happens in terms of the culture that people consume, the podcasts they listen to or don't listen to, the shows they watch. 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. Life has been anything but easy for 20-year-old Dasani Coates. Used purple Uggs and Patagonia fleeces cover thinning socks and fraying jeans. I just find them to be some of the most interesting people I've ever met. Over the next year, 911 dispatchers will take some 350 calls from Auburn, logging 24 reports of assault, four reports of child abuse, and one report of rape. They would look at them and say, "How could they have eight children? But she was not at all that way with the mice. There was no sign announcing the shelter, which rises over the neighbouring projects like an accidental fortress.
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