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

For the past two years, Dasani, age 11, has lived in a small room in the Auburn Family Residence, a shelter for the unhoused, with her mother Chanel, her stepfather Supreme, and her six siblings: sisters Hada (6), Maya (7), Avianna (10), and Nana (10), and brothers Papa (5), Khaliq (11), and Baby Lee-Lee. Nana has an eye condition that is gradually causing her to become blind.

Chanel, Dasani’s mother, is recently returned after she temporarily lost custodial rights because of an opioid addiction. During her absence, Dasani’s stepfather Supreme had supervised custody of the children. The family regularly catches mice in the room, and they use a yellow bucket as a toilet.

Dasani believes that Auburn is haunted. Her grandmother Joanie was born there when it was a hospital. Dasani is preparing to go to a new school and worries she will be made fun of for living at the shelter. Elliott opines that Dasani’s story is inseparable from the past of her family members and her ancestors, which spans the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Great Migration.