In Conversation: On Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds: A Refugee’s Search for Home & Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and a former staff writer at the Miami Herald. She has won a Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award, a Scripps Howard Award, and prizes from the Overseas Press Club and the American Society of News Editors. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (Random House) is her eight-year chronicle of Dasani, a girl whose spirit is tested by homelessness, poverty, and racism in an unequal America. In her sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with her family’s history, tracing the passage of their ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, the homelessness crisis in New York City is exploding amid the deepening chasm between rich and poor. Dasani must guide her siblings through a city riddled with hunger, violence, drug addiction, and the monitoring of child protection services. Out on the street, she becomes a fierce fighter to protect the ones she loves. When she finally escapes city life to enroll in a boarding school, she faces an impossible question: Would leaving poverty mean abandoning her family – and herself? Publishers Weekly called it “stunning ... a remarkable achievement that speaks to the heart and conscience of a nation.”

Mondiant Dogon is a Congolese author, human rights activist, and refugee ambassador. He has lived in refugee camps since 1996. His collaborator, Jenna Krajeski, is a reporter for The Fuller Project whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Nation, among other publications. Dogon, a Bagogwe Tutsi born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was only 3 years old when his father’s lifelong friend, a Hutu man, came to their home with a machete in his hand and warned the family they were to be killed within hours. Dogon’s family fled into the forest, the start of a dangerous journey into Rwanda. They made their way to the first of several U.N. tent cities in which they would spend decades. For most refugees, the camp starts as an oasis but soon becomes quicksand, impossible to leave. Hideous violence stalked Dogon and his family in the camps. Rarely do refugees get to tell their own stories, but through his writing, Dogon took control of his narrative, and in Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds: A Refugee’s Search for Home (Penguin Press), he speaks for refugees everywhere. Publishers Weekly called it a “searing debut memoir ... The result is an immensely moving memorial to the Rwandan tragedy.”

Nadege Green is an independent researcher, writer, editor, community archivist, and audio producer based in Miami. Her work centers on the lived experiences of Black people in South Florida. Her practice and approach to storytelling are deeply rooted in history and first-person narratives that explore and connect issues around race, culture, climate justice, health inequities, poverty, and displacement. Her reporting has appeared on NPR, WLRN News, Marketplace, PRI’s The World, and in the Miami Herald.