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For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. Dasani is anxious, a feeling that's especially bad for poor kids who have long lived with the chronic stress brought on by exposure to violence, hunger, sleep deprivation and illness. The schools Clothing Center spans more than 17,000 square feet, with floor-to-ceiling shelves, two fitting rooms and an alterations department. Children are not often the face of homelessness, but their stories are heartbreaking and sobering: childhoods denied spent in and out of shelters, growing up with absent parents and often raising. Her face is empty of emotion. Organizations: new york times, department of housing, wylie agency jackie ko, bloomberg, laguardia community college, administration of children services. Did it or did it not? The moment she chose Hershey, she was choosing herself at the expense of them. Needed to talk to you. Dasani seems unfocused and, at times, irritable. Her city is paved over theirs. But would she ever have been? But for Dasani, succeeding at Hershey would have required a different kind of death. But long after the attention waned, Dasanis family was still homeless, now living at a shelter in Harlem. She hopes to make it to a four-year college like her friend Kali, who enrolled at Temple University in 2019 after graduating from Hershey with the scholarship given to students who follow the rules. Their clothing is heaped on the floor so Dasani shows her siblings how to fold, just like Tabitha McQuiddy showed her. Instead, she feels disconnected. Center is former NYC Mayor David Dinkins. We meet Dasani in 2012, when she is eleven years old and living with her parents, Chanel and Supreme, and seven siblings in one of New York City . Aviannas face bunched up as Dasani and Chanel rushed to hold her. Theres no home for you, Chanel keeps telling her daughter. Dasani ticks through their faces, the girls from the projects who know where she lives. And use your blessings. She looks at the two caseworkers as they break the news. They are in a hurry, the woman explains, because they are going to see a play at her church. Took a few minutes. I miss my siblings.. She loves being first the first to be born, the first to go to school, the first to win a fight, the first to make the honour roll. But the woods behind their house are another matter. A concrete walkway leads to the lobby, which Dasani likens to a jail. Day after day, Dasani would walk through Fort Greenes streets, seeing into a world that did not see her. Profile. Day after day, they step through a metal detector as security guards search their bags, taking anything that could be used as a weapon a bottle of bleach, a can of Campbells soup. All she has to do is climb the school steps. And now, on this bright September morning, Dasani will take her grandmothers path once again, to the promising middle school two blocks away. Tempers explode. The invisible child of the title is Dasani Coates. She likes being small because I can slip through things. She imagines herself with supergirl powers. There is an entire wall devoted just to socks. She had missed 52 days of school nearly a third of the academic year. She can fake it till she makes it, Dasani says. It never works. If she cries, others answer. The arc of that timeline traces Dasani's path from extreme conditions of poverty in a rodent-infested room that is home to her entire immediately . It is on the fourth floor of that shelter, at a window facing north, that Dasani now sits looking out. Dasani tells herself that brand names dont matter. Donors to the trust had expressed concern about money going to parents with a drug history. The affordable housing crisis has also reached the District. Any one of these afflictions could derail a promising child. Her therapist, Julie Williams, seems better suited to address this. Today, nearly 2,000 children attend the tuition-free school, which requires students to live on campus. Dasanis two oldest sisters, Avianna and Nana, have come along for the ride. Dasani chuckles. Coates, who was raised in Washington, D.C., along with her husband and two kids, was born in Saint . Among Hersheys students, Dasanis struggles are not unusual. She settles on a pink polo and beige khakis, smoothing her braids back with gel. To Avianna, this last question which omits the verb do sounds like the old Dasani. I have a lot of possibility. I think we have the same mind-set, Kali says of Dasani. Every year, an unknown number of students leave Hershey. He was arrested "for violating a bail condition to comply with COVID-19 health orders" according to the CBC. The people I hang out with. Last fall, when New York Times reporter Andrea Elliott published "Invisible Child," a 28,000-word profile of Dasani Coates, a 12-year-old homeless girl in Brooklyn, the Times' Public Editor said it was the longest investigation the paper had ever published all at once. This is the type of fact that nobody can know. Dasani can get lost looking out her window, until the sounds of Auburn interrupt. She will be cleaning stables, raking leaves and doing other hard chores. But lately, the Akerses are seeing some improvements. She hopes to slip by them all unseen. But at his core, Akers is like Dasani Brooklyn-made. At the time, Elliott is researching what would become a five-part series featuring Dasani in The . Students yank Dasani to the front of the bus where the driver, who has pulled over, is radioing for help. When it was time to run, I would complain., She is sounding older, more self-possessed. She never ceases to be impressed by her daughters might. The old Dasani did everything. He knows that if she feels like shes been heard, shell settle down. He also wants Dasani to think about her role and how she could have handled the conflict differently. They snore with the pull of asthma near a gash in the wall spewing sawdust. Dasani in class at Milton Hersey School in 2015. Dasani Coates. Now I gotta worry about a knife in your face.. The three of them can design the ads, whereas Avianna is more of a performer. The new Dasani hews to the rules of another home, where each child must clean up after herself. Their sister is always first. The siblings let this slide at first. She grabs a small steak knife, playfully jabbing it at her housemate. One of the first things Dasani will say is that she was running before she walked. We suffocate them with the salt!. It was in Brooklyn that Chanel was also named after a fancy-sounding bottle, spotted in a magazine in 1978. Coates, a pastor at GraceLife Church in Edmonton, Alberta, shared the powerful moment during an interview with Rebel News' Sheila Gunn Reid. She cannot believe she has As for conduct and effort and a B in math. Even absent this issue, any cash donations would have counted as income, causing the family to lose its food stamps and other public assistance. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. They have already discussed Dasanis four-week adjustment plan. Chanel is allowed one weekly phone call to Dasani, at a predesignated time. Dasani pushes through the mayhem and into her mothers arms. This article is adapted from Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City, by Andrea Elliott, to be published by Random House on Oct. 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/magazine/dasani-invisible-child.html. The last we heard about. Thats why., Thats not my problem! Only later, when Dasani looked back on this moment, did she begin to understand what happened. In 2005, Dasani was introduced in the Argentinian market with the flavours peach, lemon, citrus and regular. Dasani changes the subject, telling her mother that some of her classmates are from New York, including a girl who is mad ghetto. Hershey is so quiet that any noise is jarring the rustling of branches, the thrum of a truck. She is currently a student at LaGuardia Community College in New York. Have Democrats learned them? Im telling you. But the longer they can endure this separation, the more likely they are to meet the schools goal of leading fulfilling and productive lives. I am at the wheel, next to Chanel, who would soon turn 37. On Feb. 19, 2016, Dasanis phone rings. She makes do with what she has and covers what she lacks. And theyre lazy. Youre gonna have some days whether youve been here for a while or whether youre new that youre gonna want to give up and say This aint worth it, Akers says. She seems eager to reflect, taking responsibility when bad things happen. Entire neighbourhoods would be remade, their families displaced, their businesses shuttered, their histories erased by a gentrification so vast and meteoric that no brand of bottled water could have signalled it. If they are seen at all, it is only in glimpses pulling an overstuffed suitcase in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for a tourist rather than a local without a home. Thats mine! Dasani was eleven years old, living with her parents and seven siblings in one of New York City's shelters for families experiencing homelessness when she met the book's author, a Pulitzer-winning . The game chess., Oh, chess chess, Chanel says. The Least of Us: True Tales . They spend their days in school, their nights in the shelter. Dasani keeps forgetting to count the newest child. Together with her siblings, Dasani has had to persevere in an environment riddled with stark inequality, hunger, violence, drug addiction and homelessness. Read about her incredible journey to @ LaGuardiaCC, where she is studying business administration. Colloquial language, Dasani writes in pen, is a regional dialect that is only spoken and understood by a group of people; includes slang., Objective language, she continues, is dealing with facts, whereas subjective language is influenced by a persons emotions, prejudice and opinion. She distinguishes between the literal, which means what is said, and the figurative, which uses devices to create an image in the readers mind., If Dasani were to describe in a figurative way what happens on Jan. 8, 2016, she would say that her anger had been swelling like a giant cloud. Thats why we coming to steal you., Every time Chanel betrays the Hershey script, she tries to recover. Dasani in Brooklyn in September.CreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times. It was always Sani. This is a sign either that Lee-Lee has matured or that their bond has weakened. Pictures of them lined a corridor of the school a long procession of white faces that began to include African Americans starting in 1968, followed by women nearly a decade later. It takes four more weeks. Lets just go.. Dasani returned to her seat as James began her address, getting a handshake on her way there from new Mayor Bill de Blasio, who made combating poverty a central part of his campaign. About one in five has been homeless, more than half have had a parent incarcerated and about half have been exposed to substance abuse in their families. Until then, Dasani considered herself a baby expert. She ate quickly, as if the food might vanish. Most of Dasanis mentors at Hershey are Black: Jonathan Akers; her therapist, Julie Williams; her cheerleading and track coaches. I felt like I left her at the wrong time. Hi, Dasani, Lee-Lee says, sounding like a different child. Within a month of arriving, she is starting to excel. The people I grew up with. It has been five months since Dasani was home, and she is unaware of all that has transpired. The whole word.. She puts the call on speaker phone as I listen. We directed them to the Legal Aid Society, which had set up a trust for Dasani and her siblings. Who paid for water in a bottle? Dasani races back upstairs, handing her mother the bottle. They are all here, six slumbering children breathing the same stale air. I can advocate for stuff.. There is no part of Dasanis New York that is unfamiliar to Jonathan Akers, from Staten Islands North Shore to the Spanish Harlem of his in-laws. She has golden skin, brown curls and is like Dasani part Dominican. Dasani wonders how much McQuiddy knows about switching between white America and Black America. No. Taped to the wall is the childrens proudest art: a bright sun etched in marker, a field of flowers, a winding path. Dasani went from saying This is lit to This is amazing and awesome, words that Chanel mimics with a flat, nasal a. On 12 occasions, they found evidence of parental neglect because of a lack of supervision, educational lapses or parental drug use. If you do the right thing, I dont mind letting you come down for every holiday. Author and journalist Andrea Elliott followed Dasani and her family for nearly 10 years, chronicling Dasani's life and growth. She reaches around Chanels waist to check if she is still fat, which means she is OK. Chanel lifts her chin above her daughters head, which means Dasani is still a child. They have tried, in their own ways, to challenge the notion that one must be white to succeed. Then she makes her bed, does her chores, eats breakfast and hops into the van, riding up a long, curvy road. Each spot is routinely swept and sprayed with bleach and laid with mousetraps. This is less a matter of code-switching than of coexistence. Youre kind of strong, though, Chanel sniffs. I wanna go home., For Dasani, home is more than a place. Over the next year, 911 dispatchers will take some 350 calls from Auburn, logging 24 reports of assault, four reports of child abuse, and one report of rape. Most children come to Hershey with a different skill set. I was always a D or an F, she says. Even Dasanis name speaks of a certain reach. Dasani Coates is the main focus and protagonist of the story. Chanel wishes Dasani could see how quickly the time will fly. She's the homeless Brooklyn girl whose plight the New York Times' Andrea Elliott chronicled in a moving series of Times features last December. Her grades drop. Most people associate Hershey with chocolate or the theme park named for the chocolate located in a town of the same name. The addiction that stalks Chanel and Supreme. Yep., On Feb. 1, Dasani picks up the phone to hear her mothers voice. I want to attend the Milton Hershey school because I want to get a better education, Dasani wrote in her application essay. And they do nothing to help me.. "But the opposite happened. A stranger spotted him and called the police. But Dasani is not just talking differently. She remained with Sherry, a stable, churchgoing businesswoman, while spending weekends with Joanie, who relied on welfare checks to support her habit. They take their seats, facing each other. Spring break is around the corner. Thats not how you fold your clothes! Dasani quips. Chanel wasnt ready for that leap. Some children rebel, hoping their transgressions will send them home. She will major in business, starting a family-run music-production company. In September, Dasani hit a milestone: She started classes at LaGuardia Community College, majoring in business administration. Dasani loses control of her body. The federal. You see the people?, Thats where Im at, Chanel says. The eighth grader takes off her belt, handing it to her friends and walking toward Dasani. Chanels childhood dovetailed with a new era of urban crisis. To change Dasanis behavior, the team must identify her triggers any thoughts, words or actions that cause her to lose control.