You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls the house a 520 sq ft space containing her family and all their possessions. Mice scurry across the floor. 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. Then the New York Times published Invisible Child, a series profiling a homeless girl named Dasani. Dasani's 20. Her eyes can travel into Manhattan, to the top of the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach a hundred floors. Still, the baby howls. 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 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. This harsh routine gives Auburn the feel of a rootless, transient place. Who paid for water in a bottle? I saw in Supreme and in Chanel a lot of the signs of someone who is self-medicating. By the time I got to Dasani's family, I had that stack and I gave it to them. By the time Dasani came into the world, on 26 May 2001, the old Brooklyn was vanishing. And you can't go there unless you're poor. She's had major ups and major downs. And then you have to think about how to address it. It's available wherever you get your books. The mouse-infested shelter didnt deter Dasani from peeking out her windowsill every morning to catch a glimpse of the Empire State Building. She felt that the streets became her family because she had such a rocky childhood. So Bed-Stuy, East New York. So there were more than 22,000 children in homeless shelters at that time in the main system. We burn them! Dasani says with none of the tenderness reserved for her turtle. Dasani's family of ten lives in one room of the Auburn Family Residence, a homeless shelter in Brooklyn. IE 11 is not supported. The mice used to terrorise Dasani, leaving pellets and bite marks. A Phil & Teds rain shell, fished from the garbage, protects the babys creaky stroller. 'Invisible Child' chronicles how homelessness shaped She has a full wardrobe provided to her. The rap of a security guards knuckles on the door. Child Nowadays, Room 449 is a battleground. They're quite spatially separated from it. I mean, I have a lot of deep familiarity with the struggle of substance abuse in my own family. She was an amazing ethnographer and she and I had many conversations about what she called the asymmetry of power, that is this natural asymmetry that's built into any academic subject, reporter subject relationship. Book Review: Invisible Child, by Andrea Elliott - The New York Her siblings will soon be scrambling to get dressed and make their beds before running to the cafeteria to beat the line. But it remains the case that a shocking percentage of Americans live below the poverty line. She's a hilarious (LAUGH) person. And just exposure to diversity is great for anyone. Despite the circumstances, Dasani radiated with potential. She is sure the place is haunted. That's so irresponsible." Sometimes she doesnt have to blink. 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. 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. She's transient." You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to nbcnews.com/whyisthishappening. And a lot of things then happen after that. Named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyns gentrification, her story has been featured in five front pages of the New York Times. Shes One in five kids. 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. And I was so struck by many things about her experience of growing up poor. It makes me feel like theres something going on out there, she says. Her hope for herself is to keep, as she's put it to me, her family and her culture close to her while also being able to excel.. East New York still is to a certain degree, but Bed-Stuy has completely changed now. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. Mothers shower quickly, posting their children as lookouts for the buildings predators. And he didn't really understand what my purpose was. She would help in all kinds of ways. There are parts of it that are painful. And it's a great pleasure to welcome Andrea to the show now. It, sort of, conjured this new life as this new life was arriving. Now Chanel is back, her custodial rights restored. What she knows is that she has been blessed with perfect teeth. Andrea has now written a book about Dasani. Why Is This Happening? It was really tough: Andrea Elliott on writing about New Yorks homeless children. Chanel. And they act as their surrogate parents. He said, "Yes. And that's impossible to do without the person being involved and opening up and transparent. And what really got me interested, I think, in shifting gears was in the end of 2011, Occupy Wall Street happened. It signalled the presence of a new people, at the turn of a new century, whose discovery of Brooklyn had just begun. Paired with photographs by colleague Ruth We just had all these meetings in the newsroom about what to do because the story was unfolding and it was gripping. Have Democrats learned them? They wound up being placed at Auburn. It wasn't just that she was this victim of the setting. Then the series ran at the end of 2013. She counts her siblings in pairs, just like her mother said. A fascinating, sort of, strange (UNINTEL) generous institution in a lot of ways. Part of the government. And that was stunning to me. By Ryan Chittum. Invisible Child No, I know. And this is a current that runs through this family, very much so, as you can see by the names. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. 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. But I think she just experienced such an identity crisis and she felt so much guilt. I never stopped reporting on her life. 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. She liked the sound of it. The familys room at the Brooklyn shelter, with Dasani, right, sitting on the bed. There are several things that are important to know about this neighborhood and what it represents. 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 Poverty and homelessness in the details: Dasani Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. Auburn used to be a hospital, back when nurses tended to the dying in open wards. And then their cover got blown and that was after the series ran. 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. Thats not gonna be me, she says. And at that time in my career, it was 2006. Andrea Elliott: Can I delve into that for a second? It's on the west side just west of downtown. And she sees a curious thing on the shelf of her local bodega. And she became, for a moment, I wouldn't say celebrity, but a child who was being celebrated widely. How an immersionist held up the story of one homeless
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