Invisible Child, by Andrea Elliott

Review by Dave Gamrath

One-liner:  The wonderfully written story that author Andrea Elliott tells in Invisible Child provides the reader clarity as to why American families struggle to break the cycle of poverty.

Book Review: 

The United States has the highest child poverty rate of any wealthy country after Romania.  In recent years, many American cities have seen dramatic growth in homelessness, including Seattle.  Much has been written as to why poverty, and homelessness, have remained so pervasive in America.  In her Pulitzer Prize winning book Invisible Child:  Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott provides readers a compelling understanding of just how bad things are, and how challenging it is to break the cycle of poverty. 

Elliott began her study in 2012.  Her goal was to write a story about poverty through focusing on kids.  To do so, Elliott tagged along with a homeless Black family of ten in Brooklyn, NY, living in a city shelter.  Elliott chose this family because of the eldest daughter, twelve-year-old Dasani, named after the bottled water.  Dasani’s strong, open personality attracted her to Elliott, who strove to “stand in the midst of her life.”  That’s just what Elliott did for the next eight years.  Invisible Child is remarkably well-written.  Elliott is able to give her readers the feeling that they too are standing amid Dasani’s family, and experiencing the continuous challenges and traumas that they face. 

A key element Elliott makes clear is how poverty is generational, and breaking the cycle of poverty is extraordinarily difficult, if not seemingly impossible in America.  Elliot is able to convey this by going back in time, and capturing the personal stories of Dasani’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  Moving north to New York City in an attempt to escape the extreme racism in America’s South, her great-grandparents were still unable to escape poverty, largely due to the exclusion of Blacks from real estate ownership, as well as from higher education and white-collar jobs. 

The stress and pressures of being poor often leads to drug addiction.  Dasani’s grandmother suffered from addiction, and as a result, Dasani’s mother, Chanel, suffered greatly as a child.  Chanel was homeless, and by age fifteen had attended seven different schools.  She learned to survive on the streets, and in her teens, joined a gang, looking for a sense of family.  Addiction and crime followed, finally landing Chanel in jail for theft and assault.  Dasani’s step-father, Supreme, had his own traumatic childhood.  “All I remember is violence.”  Supreme was always hungry, and had to steal to eat.  Supreme’s father was schizophrenic, and neither parent ever worked.  Drugs were everywhere.  When Chanel and Supreme met, they each had two children from previous relationships.  They decided to marry and merge their families, and to have four additional children, seeing strength in a large family.  “They fantasized about having many children – ‘one full family,’ to heal a history of broken homes.”

Over the years, both parents suffer from chronic unemployment and addiction.  They fail to hold down a job or to resist getting high.  Their cycle was break-up, get back together, then break up again.  Although they both love their kids, it is also clear that they do not have the tools to provide stability, or to keep a roof over the family.  They move from shelter to shelter, and go in and out of drug treatment programs.  Dasani, as the eldest daughter, is forced into a parental role, becoming a “parentified child.”  Her siblings rely on her to meet many of their needs, placing an enormous burden on her.

Elliott describes Dasani as “always in motion”, but there is another side to Dasani that tries to blend in and not be noticed.  Dasani tells Elliott that she “wants to be invisible” to help her avoid trouble, but trouble often finds her anyway.  At her junior high school, Dasani’s teachers and principal provide her strong role models, and school serves as a substitute home.  Her school principal describes her as having rare smarts while in extreme circumstances.  Being homeless make it extraordinarily difficult for children to keep up in school.  Dasani has continuous ups and downs, at times doing well in school, then being forced to miss many days to help at home or when the family moves to a new shelter.  Her mom Chanel encourages her to defend herself and fight if other kids challenge her.  Dasani “hits like a man,” thus wins a lot of fights, but is often in trouble for doing so.

The up and down cycles continue throughout the eight years that Elliott follows Dasani and her family.  Unfortunately, there are far more down times than up.  But two major positive events do impact Dasani.  First is when Elliott’s five-part report on the family is published on the front page of the New York Times, for five days in a row.  Dasani becomes a celebrity, an example of child poverty that should not be allowed to exist in America.  But as politicians use Dasani as a political prop, her family remains homeless and hungry. 

The second positive event is in ninth grade, when Dasani’s school principal lobbies for her to be accepted at the Milton Hershey School for impoverished children.  Hershey has an endowment larger than most colleges, and has a rigorous program to turn impoverished kids’ lives around.  Dasani moves to Hershey, PA, and experiences wealth that she could never have imagined.  But as she tries to adapt at the school, her family’s’ struggles worsen.  Adapting to this new environment is understandably difficult, but the guilt that comes with knowing your family is failing at home makes it much worse.

Elliott provides extensive histories and details of many of the dynamics involving poverty, including homelessness, gentrification, lack of affordable housing, drug addiction and recovery, crime, racism, etc.  Elliott also goes deep on the government agencies and programs that are chartered to help the poor.  To me it felt like Elliott gave these agencies an honest assessment, including both the good and the bad.  Sometimes the agencies are facing impossible circumstances, but also, they often underperform.  Elliott makes clear that the history of America in dealing with the poor is not pretty.  Even when intentions were good, often outcomes were not.  And some programs were outright cruel.  The war on drugs was really a war on the poor, and historically, “societies answer to poverty, time and again, was to separate children from their families.” 

In Invisible Child, Elliot provides a compelling story of each member of Dasani’s family.  She writes in a way that makes the reader feel that they actually know the family, and for this, their stories can feel heartbreaking.  It is easy from the outside to critically judge the adults in the story.  But a key goal of Elliott’s is to make it clear that these adults were once children too, that the scars from their childhood cannot easily be overcome, and that our society basically encourages history to repeat itself. 

Reviewer Opinion: 

An excellent book.

Reviewer Rating of Book: 

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