Invisible Child

I can understand people who may want to avoid a book with “poverty” and “survival” in the title, but it is as gripping as any great novel. Andrea Elliott does an amazing job of making Dasani, her siblings, and her parents–who face the challenges of poverty, addiction, and a social services system that fails too often–come to life as a complicated, loving, angry, joyful, and at times, desperate family. 

I grew to deeply care about the family because Elliott doesn’t portray them as passive victims but rather people with agency who often make bad choices–but she gives the context for… show more.

Andrea Elliott, a New York Times reporter, spent nearly a decade reporting on Dasani Coates, a Black child growing up in a New York City shelter, and the result is a deeply humane look at a family in poverty.

This Pulitzer-winning book makes clear that the child protection system is a downstream solution to problems that begin with the failure of our society to meet families’ basic human needs.

As Dasani’s journey becomes public in a front page New York Times series, she is afforded an opportunity to escape poverty and become educated in an elite institution, but Elliott shows… show more.

Andrea Elliott’s book (winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction) shows just how difficult it is for anyone to overcome the circumstances into which they are born. Elliott follows the rise of one young girl, Dasani, living in the projects with her drug-addicted mother and stepfather. Despite being given many opportunities, including being educated in one of the finest prep schools in the country, Dasani finds it difficult to break free of her roots. This highlighted for me just how unusual Liz Murray’s and Tara Westover’s accomplishments are.