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.”
