January Book Report: Invisible Child by Andrea Elliot

 I read Invisible Child for the faculty book club at school.  I knew of the story from having read some of it in the New York Times, where Elliot worked as a reporter and first conceived of the story.

The book follows the life of a girl named Dasani, born in 2001, and 8 years old and living with her family in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn when the story begins.  We follow Dasani, her parents, and her seven siblings for 10 years.  Elliot’s account is both compassionate toward Dasani and her family and condemning of the discordant and failing maze of social services for homeless families in NYC and, I suspect, the nation.

Dasani and her family are Black and that clearly has an affect on them.  They are homeless and often hungry.  They rely on a social services network that is painfully bureaucratic even while it spends millions of dollars each year without securing safe housing for children and families.  There are more than 75,000 homeless children enrolled in NYC public schools and Elliot’s account of the schools - especially McKinney Middle School in Brooklyn - reveals that these institutions are staffed by teachers and administrators who truly care but who are also trying to provide  education as a balm and solution amidst a torrent of disasters that befall poor children.  It’s too great a task in far too many cases.

 Elliot’s account of ACS and NYC social services is less compassionate.  Though sometimes staffed by people who genuinely care they are just as likely to be overwhelmed by rules and bureaucracy.  Services and care are often dismal as a result.  Since we are talking about children and families, dismal is a disaster. 

At one point, Dasani and her siblings are in foster care - separated from their parents and one another - at a cost in excess of nearly $50,000 a month.  That kind of money would - of course - be better spent housing, clothing, and feeding the family than it would be balkanizing them.  The separation is disastrous for many of the children, not to mention their parents.  The children who do survive it, do so with social and emotional wounds that may haunt them for the rest of their lives.  The best outcome is for a member of the family to be limping along but never thriving.

It is well-known that I prefer a happy book.  This story is not happy.  But it was utterly compelling and revealed a family that had complicated needs and problems but always - always - had love.  In that, there is happiness of a sort.  Love is clearly not enough but it is a start and a social services network that keeps that knowledge at its core might be able to truly help.  It should never be acceptable in this rich nation for a child to be hungry or homeless.  The problems that result from that are assuredly complex.  But, as Elliot thoughtfully demonstrates, the cure need not be worse than the condition itself.