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Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott

An astonishing story about a child, a family, and the failure of institutions to help them, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer

Andrea Elliott is the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who spent nearly a decade reporting for the New York Times on 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 was named after a brand of bottled water that her mother could never afford. Dasani comes of age as New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.

When, aged thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

In January 2022 Elliott came to Intelligence Squared to discuss the themes of her bestselling book Invisible Child, which was a Barack Obama Favourite Book of the Year, an astonishing story about a child, a family, and the failure of institutions to help them.

Praise for Invisible Child

A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021

A vivid and devastating story of American inequality.” The New York Times

Hands down the best book I have read in years.” Thomas Harding, bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake.

 


Speakers

Speaker

Andrea Elliott

Investigative reporter for The New York Times and a former staff writer at the Miami Herald


Investigative reporter for The New York Times and a former staff writer at the Miami Herald. Her reporting on inequality has been awarded 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. Her first book is Invisible Child.
Chair

Alex Preston

Prize-winning novelist and journalist


Prize-winning author of three novels, including In Love and War, and the bestselling book about birds in literature, As Kingfishers Catch Fire. Alex appears regularly on radio and television and reviews books for the Observer.