poverty, survival, and hope in an American city Elliott, Andrea creator author text bibliography biography Biographies. Biographies. nyu 2021 First edition monographic eng

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xx, 602 pages : maps, genealogical table ; 24 cm "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 symbolize Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tightknit family from shelter to shelter, her story reaches back to trace the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age in the twenty-first century, New York City's homeless crisis is exploding amid the growing chasm between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental addiction, violence, housing instability, pollution, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to "code-switch" between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?"-- "A house is not a home": 2012-2013 -- The Sykes family: 1835-2003 -- Root shock: 2003-2013 -- "That fire gonna burn!": 2013-2015 -- Dasani's departure: 2015 -- "To endure any how": 2015-2016 -- Dasani's way: 2016-2021 Andrea Elliott Includes bibliographical references and index n-us-ny Coates, Dasani 2001- Homeless children New York (State) New York Biography African American homeless children New York (State) New York Biography African American homeless children Homeless children New York (State) New York Elliott, Andrea. New York : Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2021] First edition (DLC) 2021012358 9780812986945 0812986946 2021012357 210326 20220616144649.0 1242026785