Based on nearly a decade of reporting Invisible Child follows 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 is named for the bottled water that
comes to symbolise Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As
Dasani moves with her family from shelter to shelter this story traces the passage of Dasani's
ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. 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 at age 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? By turns heartbreaking and revelatory provocative and
inspiring Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience the
importance of family and the cost of inequality.
