Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott.

4/5 rating. 525 pages.

Book #8 of 2023. Read March 26, 2023.

This book is beautiful, heart-wrenching and infuriating to read. It follows eight years in the life of Dasani, a young black girl, and her family with 7 siblings and 2 loving, but somewhat erratic parents living, often homeless, in New York.

Andrea is an investigative reporter for the @nytimes who started out trying to cover the difficult plights of just one family in poverty in New York. Her goal was to bring some voice to the children living in these conditions who nearly always have no say in their lives.

This is represented so well by Dasani’s parents who make continual bad choices, spurred on by bad luck, and bad circumstances. Though it’s hard to feel like any of us would have much better of a chance to escape. No matter how hard they try, things always drag them back down.

Dasani is able to get into the Hershey school in Pennsylvania which supports students from poverty who live at the boarding school. But while she is in this new place, her family is struggling just to stay together and afloat back at “home”. They are forced to separate and have to do everything in their power to fight for their family.

This book really was hard to read at times because of the absolute injustice experienced by the family, as well as their inability to get out of their own way at times. I would recommend this book to everyone, but especially to anyone in caring professions, as I couldn’t help but connect these difficulties to some of my own students I see.

Quotes:

“Almost half of New York’s 8.3 million residents are living near or below the poverty line.”

“‘I want them to see that they are the authors of their lives,’ she says.”

“Teachers are the happiest adults that Dasani knows.”

“To each of these judgments, Chanel has an answer. She’d like to meet the mother who endures childbirth, six times over, for some extra food stamps ‘that barely last the month.’”

“I didn’t want the street to become their family too.”

“How can I pull up any straps with no boots?”

“They talk of wanting real jobs, but many things get in the way – their criminal records, their periodic relapses, their daily attendance at the drug treatment clinics upon which custody of their children rests.”

“Soon I am staring at footage of mice, roaches, and mold on the walls. Auburn’s decay is no secret to city and state inspectors, who have cited Dasani’s room for thirteen violations – including, lead paint – since her family moved in.”

“[Dasani] comes in late most mornings, never saying why. She seems sleepy, as if she just rolled out of bed. The truth is that Dasani has been up for hours. By the time other children are just waking, she has finished her chores and is scrambling to walk her siblings to their bus stops.”

“‘Success does not come without sacrifice and struggle,’ she reads, after settling into her desk.”

“More than 80,000 schoolchildren have been homeless at some point this year [2013] (a number that will surpass 100,000 by 2016).”

“She nods proudly at her children. It is Dasani’s belief that she and her siblings are the cause of her mother’s ruin. It never occurs to her that for Chanel, the children represent her only accomplishment.”

“By the end of [WWII], June’s regiment had liberated two cities from the Nazis. ‘The Italians knew we were going to fight the dreaded Germans and that some of us would not come back,’ Ivan wrote. ‘They threw flowers at our vehicles. They handed flowers and wine to those of us riding in the vehicles. They threw kisses at us.’ For decades to come, the Buffalo Soldiers’ [,black soldiers] heroics would be taught in Italian grade schools and reenacted by Italian civilians, while going largely ignored in America.”

“He was a man of few words, as befits those with the longest stories.”

“It was not obvious, in that blinding moment, that money could be useful only if they knew how to spend it. To think it would bring salvation was like asking a set of keys to drive a car. Money could not erase the past.”

“They maneuvered around the shelter’s rules as well. Residents were banned from bringing in bleach, yet the janitors refused to clean the bathrooms. So the children swiped the janitors’ bleach and scrubbed the floors themselves.”

“Fighting makes her feel powerful. It distracts from other feelings – from what she will learn, years from now, to call ‘being vulnerable.’”

“Nothing counts like the people who show up.”

“Even to dream is an act of faith.”

“She knows, for example, that when the school year ends, a cascade of goodbyes will come. She must part with the most reliable adults in her life – the teachers, the security guards, the cafeteria staff, the nurses.”

“‘I don’t see you dull,’ Dasani days. ‘I see you shine.’”

“They have good news: Papa is safe. Chanel asks them to retrieve him from the hospital, as she cannot leave her other children unattended. The officers agree. But when they get to the hospital, they learn that ACS has been called. The nurse writes ‘mother and father are both refusing to come to ER as per NYPD.’”

“There is no part of her body as critical to defeating poverty, or as vulnerable to its effects, as the brain.”

“This makes struggle a good thing – not a sign of stupidity but a path to intellect.”

“yet.”

“Nothing beats being present.”

“Over half of all Black children in America are subjected to at least one child protection probe before turning eighteen.”

“Easy victories are the enemy of growth.”

“‘When it starts to get uncomfortable, you know you’re getting better,’ says Coach Ward.”

“More than a century after President Theodore Roosevelt’s landmark conference concluded that America’s homes ‘should not be broken up for reasons of poverty,’ the federal government is giving ten times as much money to programs that separate families (most of them poor) as to programs that might preserve them.”

“Black people tend to have more melanin in their hair, which absorbs a higher concentration of metabolites – sometimes just from the atmosphere. This means that a Black person who is drug-free could test positive simply from being in the same room as someone smoking crack.”

“He looks at John, whose easy smile hints of privileges that Supreme can scarcely conjure, things like dental care and a college degree. In John’s world, a man can feed his children without considering it a victory.”

“Lately, when Dasani gets mad, her housefather has only to say, ‘Those who anger you…’ and she finishes the sentence: ‘…control you.’”

“‘If you have a big enough why, then you can endure almost any how,’ says Mr. Akers, enunciating the key words of this classic quote.”

“On October 1, ACS comes to the house to question the children. On October 2, housing inspectors come visit the apartment, allowed in by Supreme. The next day, the gas is restored and, two days later, Supreme receives emergency funds from welfare, including a ‘retroactive’ food stamp benefit totaling $3,812 – for the allotments the children should have received since June, as if money could erase four months of hunger. This sudden rash of fixes will be presented, by ACS in court, as evidence that the agency did its job. They will say that the children are in distress, but not because of inaction by ACS or the welfare office or Foundling or the landlords or the councilwoman or 311 or the housing department or the gas company. The culprit, they will say, is Supreme, who neglected the ‘hazardous’ conditions of his home and by extension his children, who are found to be ‘unkempt, dirty, smelly and having a foul odor.’”

“You don’t disavow the past. You just sound more like the future.”

“In total, the care of Chanel and Supreme’s children is costing more than $33,000 per month – a figure that will approach $400,000 per year. The Foundling supervisor, Linda, often thinks about this math. It would cost far less to keep a poor family intact, sparing them the trauma of separation, by placing a full-time aide in the home to prevent the problems that lead to neglect.”

“The push to end parental rights and speed up adoption came at a time when more than half a million children were languishing in foster care (a population that has since dropped by 24 percent). But the law signed by Clinton brought a new dimension to the problem: In 2015, more than sixty-two thousand children had been referred orphans – the rights of their parents terminated – while they had yet to be adopted.”

“When a caseworker asks Khaliq how he wants to ‘be perceived,’ the answer is that it does not matter. Society already sees him as ‘a thief, a trouble maker, and angry.’”

“And that, right there, is the most beneficial part of a boy’s life: to be able, at the end of the day, to have a conversation with his father. So that he can know that what he’s doing, as a boy, is right.”

“Why should other kids have to start way behind in the race of life because of things they couldn’t control or never learned how to control?”

“In fact, the United States had, in 2012, the highest child poverty rate of any wealthy country after Romania.”

“Almost nothing counts more than the person who shows up.”

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