Reviews tagging 'Classism'

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott

4 reviews

krissymcgeehan's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

5.0

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

 
“It’s exposure. How do kids think out of the box if they’ve never seen out of the box?” 
 
This is one of those books that just felt like a necessary read. I know that winning the Pulitzer moved it up my TBR list quite a lot. But even without that, this just felt like one of those age-defining works of nonfiction and I knew I'd pick it up at some point. 
 
We meet Dasani at age 11, living in a homeless shelter in NYC with her close-knit family (parents and seven siblings). Over the next eight years, we follow Dasani as she moves throughout the city, surviving both for herself and in a leadership role for her siblings, as he family deals with poverty, hunger, housing instability, racism, (parental) addiction, violence, underfunded and segregated schools, and the ever-present "monitoring" of child protection services. When academic champions for Dasani help her get into a boarding school in  Pennsylvania, she leaves the city and life she's always known, for an entirely different challenge in rural America, separate from her family and having to learn to be someone totally different (or at least act like it). As time goes by, Dasani must answer an impossible conundrum: is leaving poverty behind worth the price of losing her connections to her family?   
 
Look. This was *thorough.* I can see why it won the Pulitzer. The depth of Elliot's time with the family, research into their ancestry, the tying in of American history and culture and socio-political landscape, and just the general detail with which she communicated both their daily lives and interactions, as well as the larger picture realities of their lives, was incredible. I mean, the audiobook was 21 hours, but after finishing, I see why that much time and space was needed. And I honestly even would have been ok with more. For most of this reading/listening experience, I actually didn't make any notes about my thoughts or reactions, which is pretty rare for me. I was that swept up in Dasani, and her family's, life. I will say that there were a couple times where perhaps the overall pacing, or however these aspects were all woven together, didn't happen with quite the ideal flow. I really can't put my finger on why, or what the issue was, but perhaps that's just the reality of following a family of this size, with this many scattered pieces and diverse storylines, plus all the other contextual aspects that also needed page-time. It's a lot to fit together. 
 
This is a "go read the whole thing yourself" kind of review. Like, there isn't a great way to distill down this entire experience, and it deserves to be experienced in its entirety anyways. But there were a few key takeaways or particularly affecting things I'll go ahead and point out here. First, this was an interesting look at a life governed by extremes: getting out of extreme poverty means getting an extreme break, like becoming extremely rich and successful, or taking an extreme step, like moving to another state for boarding school and limiting all contact with family (or removing children from a family and separating them among foster homes). It's an outlook and approach that seems doomed to failure or something where only the special few succeed, as opposed to smaller (and more accessible) steps. Like, I teach students about setting SMART goals and I feel like those concepts are nowhere here, from any perspective, including (especially) CPS. Plus, it would often be, as Elliot analyzes, cheaper to take some of those steps, versus the costs (short and long term, emotional and financial) of the extreme ones. 
 
On that note, what a searing indictment (as if we needed more proof though, honestly) of the way our support systems - welfare, child protection - fail those who need them, at best monitoring without actually helping and at worst deliberately overlooking untenable situations. I hate that, at one point, Elliot says she wanted to tell the story of poverty from a child's perspective, to garner the sympathy only kids can get...but no one wants to remember that many of the adults in this story were those kids too. And we just stop caring (or pretending to care), once they get to adulthood. But how are they supposed to suddenly be responsible and successful adults without being given tools to do so? It's infuriating. It's the same as the entire "pro-life" debate, where politicians and people care until the kid is born, then there is no support for a kid born into an untenable/unwanted situation. UGH. 
 
Ok, off my soapbox and back to this review. Let me also mention the unbelievable and deplorable housing crisis situation. Like, we see here that it's an issue even affecting people with typically “professional” jobs like teaching. They're also being evicted and living in shelters. That's absurd and, also, what kind of reason does that give anyone to "try harder," because poverty and housing instability follow even past the steps that should reasonably take you past it! Related, as always, I love the highlighting of how just a single champion (a teacher and a principal, in this case) can make such a difference in the entire trajectory in a life…and yet we see how even people who play those roles are often overlooked and/or in dire straits themselves. It’s so much to conceptualize and understand. And there is no justification for this in a country as wealthy as ours. And yet here we are. 
 
Structurally, I like that this leads up to, includes, and follows after, the actual series published in the New York Times, expanding on the limited scope of that story to address what led to it and what came after. Because, as we all know, that was not the end of this "story," and for that matter neither is this book. These are real people and lives that continue, regardless of popular attention. I appreciated the inclusion (in this case, primarily in the Afterward, similar to that way it's addressed in both Evicted) of the way the author both "found" this story, became trusted enough by them to make this story/book possible, and the moral concerns related to her involvement and reporting on this family's life. Obviously this information is important, and shedding light on the conditions of poverty is necessary to force a political agenda (and the grassroots power of public opinion) towards understanding and addressing it. And yet, there is also an aspect of concern about a journalist taking advantage of a family like this to "get the expose" and then move on from it, while the family remains in the same deplorable situation. Where are the lines and what is the best way to handle this? I'm not the person with the answers, but it's an important question to ask. And if you are curious, I think Elliot herself discusses it on an episode of @thestackspod. 
 
Anyways, overall, I was so impressed by this piece of literature. Elliot maintains a very objective writing voice, which made things a bit dry at times, but never not emotionally investing. She gave space to all perspectives (with obvious focus on Dasani and her family as a representation of the poverty and CPS experiences central to the nonfiction) in a way that allowed the reader to draw conclusions and opinions of their own. And she does a commendable job in acknowledging and presenting the complex intersections of race and poverty and healthcare and housing and childcare and the justice system and education and governmental (child protective and other) systems that Dasani and her family face. I definitely recommend this one.   
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cmvcaulfield's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

5.0

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keatynbergsten's review against another edition

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5.0

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