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Invisible Child

Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City

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Invisible Child

By: Andrea Elliott
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction 2022.

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2022.

Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolise Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani moves with her family from shelter to shelter, this story traces the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north.

Dasani comes of age as New York City's homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.

When, at age 13, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: what if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality.

©2022 Andrea Elliott (P)2022 Penguin Audio
Biographies & Memoirs Social Classes & Economic Disparity New York
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Critic reviews

"With compassion and curiosity, [Elliott] uses the story of Dasani to make visible the cycles of poverty, inequity, and resilience that plague families across the United States.... This is a remarkable achievement that speaks to the heart and conscience of a nation." (Publishers Weekly)

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Utterly gripping

this is a con that will go on to be an iconic story about how we lived in the early 21st century.

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An eye-opening journey, brilliantly read

A thoroughly engaging and eye-opening journey, brilliantly narrated/read - which is so important for an audio book.

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Heartwrenching

I loved listening to this book, it is an excellent illustration of the suffering of black Americans in the Big Apple. Something you don't expect in the first world. You can see clearly how the system is rigged against those struggling to survive. Poor Supreme, how he tried to put food on the table with the System working against him. Catch-22 made real!

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Ups and downs in a chaotic but loving poverty-stricken Brooklyn family

This reportage of one large, tightly-knit, homeless family in Brooklyn is a real eye-opener into a life that most of us will never see or experience. The deep love, the coping strategies, the obstacles in the way of efforts to extract themselves from a dire shelter for the homeless shows a family reeling from crisis to crisis but never giving up . You can’t help but admire Dasani, the eldest of eight children, who is lively, bright, cheeky and the person most able to cope with her affectionate but chaotic parents and siblings.

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Brilliantly frustrating, hopeful and depressing...

As with the many years Andrea spent documenting this awful glimpse into the too many failures of the American systems, it would take me far too many words to verbalize the tornado of thoughts in my head.
My thoughts on what every person who puts out efforts to sustain a family...or couple or single loner...especially struggling middle and lower income folks. deserves to be rewarded with....a simple but comfortable home, food, ways to flourish thru hobbies and talent, support if needed, a job, apprenticeships...all the things required to envelop a spirit of belief and kindness and pride in the country they raise their flag in....
No one needs billions or many millions to live a life of privilege....somehow, finding the heart and wisdom to balance the scales of life will. in turn, create the possibility that mankind can survive in positivity..
As I approach 70, I fear that is not the direction the world is headed and for that, shame on the people who are in charge at every level.
Change takes hard work, sacrifice and perseverance.....it doesn't look good for the future....it really doesn't...

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