Book Review: Invisible Child
Andrea Elliott is a NY Times journalist who spent 8 years following Dasani, and her family, through the projects and public support systems in New York City. Her book describing what she learned is called Invisible Child.
Elliott’s writing is journalistically precise. Non-fiction is often a biased re-framing of history. It’s more common to find deeper truths in fiction (and often through analogy and metaphor). Here, Elliott succeeds at both. She uses her technical journalistic skill to give us the unvarnished and unbiased reality. But it’s her emotional grounding and intention that shares deeper reflections about who we are as individuals in our relationships, and who we are as a society.
Part of that comes from her focus on the child, and on everyone of us as a child. Part of that comes from seeing the importance of journalistic ‘how’ at the same time as the emotional ‘why’. Part of that comes from internalizing that ‘understanding’ itself is about ‘standing amongst’ — it’s more about empathy, and less about analysis. And part of that comes from harnessing the power of the figurative through her impressive command of the literal.
But most of it comes from a mom. A mom who knows that taking care of her children is the most powerful thing any person can do, and a mom who understands how quickly even a child will take on that role.
I had a hard time getting started with the first hundred pages of this book. I’d heard Elliot talk, on NPR, or maybe the NewsHour, and I knew I’d be drawn into characters who would be tormented. Why am I putting myself through this? Two more pages. Then after the first 100 pages or so, I was amongst the characters. I don’t know that I really understood any of it, but I felt amongst a family. I usually read slowly, but after that transition, I devoured the rest of the book quickly.
Dasani and her family are all very 3D. Everyone is real, as is the painful message about how we systematically punish poor Black people. There’s not one “bad character” or even one “bad department” in any of it. Everyone does their best, but the system grew out of a nation with unprocessed deep scars around racism, and that system carries those scars.
What do we do now? Cry. That’s part of it. But seeing it for what it is has to be the hardest, and most important step. Elliott’s practical perspective is almost as unrelenting as her emotional compass is strong. That combination elevates this book to the kind of truth that’s usually reserved for great fiction.
(If you’re near Palo Alto, and want my copy, send me a note. I don’t collect books, I give them away, and this was one of the best I’ve read in a while. If I don’t hear from anyone, I’ll give it away at a gig.)
