Andrea Elliott: I felt really compelled.

I felt like I didn't have a choice.

I felt like her story found me or chose me in a sense.

Marcia Franklin: Coming up, I talk with journalist Andrea Elliott about her Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Invisible Child,” which chronicled nearly a decade in the life of one girl in New York City.

It's all part of our “Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.” Back in a moment.

(Music) Announcer: Major funding is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Franklin: Hello and welcome.

I'm Marcia Franklin.

More than 11 million children in the United States live in poverty.

Almost all are unknown outside their own communities.

But one of those children, Dasani Coates, will forever have a big part of her life memorialized in print.

She's the subject of a comprehensive look at the effects of poverty on one family in New York City called “Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City.” Written by New York Times reporter Andrea Elliott over nearly ten years, the book is an outgrowth of a multipart series about Dasani, also written by Elliott.

In 2022, the book won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.

It was Elliott's second Pulitzer.

I sat down with Ms. Elliott at the 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference to learn more about her passion for this story, some of the journalistic challenges she faced and what she hopes readers will take away from the book.

First, though, I wanted to know what it was like to win one of the world's top prizes for writers.

Franklin: Well, welcome, welcome to Idaho.

I understand this is your first time here.

Elliott: It’s my first time, and I couldn't be happier.

It’s so beautiful.

Franklin: I hope you have some time to explore ... Elliott: Me too.

Franklin: ... when you're here a little bit.

And congratulations.

My goodness.

Elliott: Thank you.

Franklin: Your second Pulitzer Prize.

Elliott: I don't even know what to say, (Laughs) except thank you.

Franklin: Where were you when you discovered or found out?

Elliott: I was driving in the rain to pick up my daughter, and, um, I, I kind of was, I went into shock and I just stopped the car.

I was actually on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, pulled over, jumped out and screamed at the sky.

And then I was like, “Wow, no one's staring at me.” And then I was like, “Oh, it's because I'm in New York, and people routinely scream at the sky and it is just like, not unusual.” And then I jumped back in the car, grabbed my daughter.

Yeah, it was pretty memorable.

Franklin: And the subject of your book, Dasani, when did you let her know about this?

And, and ... Elliott: Well, as soon as I learned, I called her, and she.

It's interesting.

So for Dasani, it didn't hold the same meaning, um, which isn't unusual.

Um, she Googled it.

She saw that it was important.

She was not that impressed.

What was really impressive to her, I think what was what I consider to be her Pulitzer was when Barack Obama chose it as one of his favorite books.

That was her moment of screaming at this, you know, hooraying at the sky, so to speak.

But, um, yeah, it was just, there’s, I think we're both pretty, uh, grateful.

We're very grateful.

And we're sort of stunned also by the response, having been in this uh, walk for so long when there wasn't an audience for it, where it was just about the work, to then see it come out and meet the world has been, um, a really unique experience.

Franklin: So it started as a series of articles.

And what made you want to go further for another?

I mean, it's a total of eight years you followed Dasani.

Now, more than that.

Um, what made you want to keep going?

Or maybe, maybe the story grabbed you and told you, you know, and you couldn't not do it.

Elliott: That's exactly it.

You put it better than I could.

I felt there was no decision to make.

I just knew that this was a story I had to continue to follow.

And that even though the initial series that ran in The New York Times was the longest up until then, um, investigative project that had ever run in the newspaper.

It was almost 30,000 words.

It felt to me like it had barely scratched the surface of what her story represented and all of the, uh, things that her life still had to teach me, and by extension, potentially readers.

And so I felt really compelled.

I felt like I didn't have a choice.

I felt like her story found me or chose me, in a sense.

Franklin: Andrea, some people may, um, look at the cover of this book and say, “I already know this story.

I don't need to read it.” What would you say to those people that is different about this?

Or maybe, you know, why they should take a second look?

What does it mean for, not just for Dasani, but for the nation?

Elliott: So I think readers often have that response of “I know this story.” And what will win them over, and you kind of have to do this early on as a writer, is both to show them a world that they actually thought they knew, but, but actually exists and they don't know, which is this world of surprise.

And at the same time, to take them deep inside it enough that they can relate to the protagonist at its center so deeply that that person's world then becomes their own.

That's what I wanted from the earliest days, because I got to know Dasani really well.

I spent so much time with her witnessing her struggles and started to see them with new eyes, and felt that her problems had become, in a way, my own problems.

And that's the kind of thing you want the reader to grasp on to, is this feeling that there's very little distance between them and the story, right?

That they are they're in it with her.

They're rooting for her.

Uh, which I was.

So I think the book kind of just translates a lot of what I was experiencing as a reporter onto the page.

If you look at the cover of this book, you might assume that this is what has become a kind of typical story in the narrative of poverty in America, which is that it's a story about a kid who escapes, who makes it, who, quote unquote, “beats the odds.” We have so many cliches to, um, uh, attend to that message, right?

Because it's become such a romantic part of the story that we tell ourselves about America, that if you work hard enough, um, meritocracy is real and it will see you through.

And what I think this any story does is it turns that narrative on its head.

Because what you see with her is this kid who has so much potential, but who faces barriers that are so much greater than anyone's kid, one, one kid's potential could, uh, ever meet.

And, and that is; I don't think that that is exceptional.

I think that that's actually representative of most kids who are in her shoes.

Uh, the vast majority of children who are stuck in poverty in America don't have a chance of getting out because they are; the, the, the odds are stacked against them.

And yet we celebrate the one who got out.

And that then lets us off the hook in a sense.

So I think that that's what's really important about her stories is, is you see all the things incrementally on the ground day after day after day, that she, a kid like her, is up against.

And it causes us to question concepts like “grit,” for example.

This notion that if a child has enough grit, enough discipline, enough wherewithal, enough, all of these things that our culture kind of assigns as the right things to have in order to to more than survive, to thrive, that they'll make it.

She, uh, actually needed a very different set of skills to survive the streets.

It wasn't about, uh, delaying gratification or discipline, or, it was about being very attuned to the present.

It was about, uh, protecting herself from threats.

And so that's a very different skill set that doesn't translate easily to this notion of what makes a successful kid in America.

Franklin: tell us what attracted you immediately to Dasani to be this central character, because I know you did a lot of research.

You wanted for the series you know, initially to see poverty through a child's eyes.

And you kind of interviewed or, you know, a lot of kids or talked to a lot.

And there was just something about Dasani that, uh, ultimately was a force field.

Elliott: Dasani’s a force field.

Dasani, the day I met Dasani, I was standing outside her homeless shelter in Brooklyn.

It was a crisp day in October of 2012.

And I'll never forget the moment I saw her and her mother and her siblings walking out.

They were very united and they just had a presence about them.

And she in particular stood out.

She was very little for her age.

Um, she was 11 at the time, and just really chatty, which is a, a skill or a trait that is helpful when you're trying to find someone to write about.

You want that person to, um, want to talk, right?

That that’s, that's our way in.

That is, uh, our connection to the people that we're writing about is through words.

And so a lot of the children I had interviewed up until that point were, um, you know, reticent, understandably, or shy or struggled to explain things.

She was the opposite.

She wanted me to know everything.

She was full of life in the way she spoke.

She was full of humor.

Humor is a very high form of coping, of course.

And it's a very interesting window into the way that people, uh, think about their lives.

She, um, was just cracking jokes and also giving life to her struggles and being able to narrate basically what she was going through.

And that just immediately stood out as very promising.

And even if she wasn't all of that, she just struck me as a hopeful kind of kid.

Like the, the kid that that you immediately, and her siblings were, too.

But there was something, because she was always the oldest and the one that was in charge of them, especially kind of endearing about her.

And I just I felt compelled to, to get to know her immediately.

She just drew me in.

She’s also clearly gifted.

She was on the honor roll, you know, and she had all of this promise about her.

And I think in those early days, I bought into that story.

Like, a lot of people do, that um, I want to write about the kid who makes it out.

I want to see, you know, something hopeful happen.

This is a natural instinct.

Um.

It's the way that we, that we survive the world, I suppose, is by looking for hope.

And looking back now, I see that that was somewhat misplaced because, of course, what she was up against was way too much for anybody to possibly survive.

And some kids do get out, as I said before, but most don't.

And so what I really wound up seeing was this experience over almost ten years of somebody with tremendous potential and gifts, uh, being knocked down again and again and again, and finding new ways to, to get back up.

So I find tremendous hope in her story to this day.

But it's a different kind of hope.

It's not defined by the, uh, measure of success that we typically give, uh, to the American story of making it out of poverty and into the middle class, going to college.

She did enroll recently in community college, but it didn't work out.

And now she's actually, though, working as a home health aide.

So she has made strides forward.

She's doing really well by her own sort of definition of success.

And I think that's really the only one that matters.

Franklin: I'm a journalist.

You're a journalist.

There are, uh, there can be an ethical quagmire, um, with stories, not only topic wise, what you're dealing with, but also with a minor child.

So talk me through some of the ethical challenges that you faced.

I mean, first of all, she's loquacious.

You know, she could, you’re a reporter; you're writing, you know.

By the way, you have like a magic pen, right?

Elliott: Yes.

Franklin: That records every, it’s an audio recorder at the same time as you're writing.

Right.

as you're writing.

Right.

as you're writing.

Right.

Elliott: Correct.

Franklin: So you're recording everything, um ... What, if any, were the sideboards or the arrangement that you had with her?

The understanding?

I mean, you're not going to have her sign a contract or whatever Elliott: No.

Franklin: ... about, uh, what you were doing and how you would, I don't know, protect her in a way from...?

Elliott: Right.

Such a major and huge question you've just asked, and I'll do my best to answer it.

From the very beginning, I was wrestling with the ethics of this.

And one of the ways early on that we the newspaper, The New York Times for this became a book, decided to try to protect Dasani, was to not include her last name, was to shield her from, from that kind of scrutiny.

And of course, the cover was blown after the series ran.

Um.

And so I think that there will always be an asymmetry of power embedded in any reporter source relationship, even when among adults.

Because we hold the keys to the story as the reporter.

We're reporting.

They don't control our words.

They don't control our analysis.

They're simply sharing their story and hoping for the best.

And so I just felt this great burden to get it right more than anything.

One thing that I think was very important to our process of trust was that their story was published at the very beginning of this book process.

It was only one eighth of what is in the book, and I think they could see, “This is how she writes; this is how hard she tries to get it right.” Franklin: didn't you, with Dasani say, I mean, you can't, uh, say “off the record” to a kid.

Elliott: “Private.” Franklin: They don't understand that, but you had this word.

Elliott: “Private.” Franklin: “Tell me if it's private.” Elliott: Yes.

Franklin: And then I won't write it.

Elliott: If something is private, that means you don't want the world to know.

Everybody can understand that; that's clear.

She, to my memory, never once invoked that right.

She was extraordinarily open.

She was extraordinarily brave in sharing her story.

Franklin: Was there any pushback that somebody who is not from the community itself, an African-American, would be telling this story?

Elliott: In 2012, when I started this story, there was no pushback, because I think in large part this very needed national conversation had yet to occur that we saw later, uh, in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder.

So I think this reckoning began to really, uh, happen later on.

But this is a very important question.

The question I think you're getting to is, “Who gets to tell a story and who should tell a story?” And all I can say is that I've been on both sides of it.

I wrote about Latin American immigrants very much like my own family, um, for the Miami Herald in, uh, 2000, 2001.

Um, my father's American and white.

And my mother is from Chile.

And so I identify as both.

I was considered to be an insider.

And there were great privileges that went with that.

And also problems.

Uh, people didn't feel compelled to explain themselves to me ‘cause they thought I just got it.

They probably also expected me to, uh, be on their side, so to speak, rather than there is a journalist trying to get many sides.

I think as journalists, no matter what our background is, we are wired to go into territory that isn't ours.

We're curious creatures and we're not supposed to stay in our own lane.

The more different the lane is, the more the burden, the greater the burden is on you in terms of thinking about your own lenses, your own blindspots, your own limitations potentially, and trying your best to get it right.

Franklin: I mean, ultimately, they were comfortable with you.

And that's, that's the important thing.

Elliott: It's also that I was a little different that made them comfortable.

And I wrote about that, that they heard my -- it was when Chanel, her mother, heard me arguing with my mother in Spanish on the phone that she ceased to see me solely as a professional asking questions and began to see me as a human being.

That this is a person with a mother.

And by the way, this is a person with two daughters and she has all these other facets to her and she wanted to get to know me.

She was as curious about me as I was about her.

Franklin: Do you think your presence in this story and for so long influenced the governmental agencies that you were working with, um, to, say, help her more than they might have?

Elliott: So that's a really important question.

Yes and no.

After the series ran, Dasani experienced a brief kind of moment of fame.

She became a kind of, um, political pawn, so to speak, for the incoming administration.

Franklin: You write very well about that.

Elliott: Thank you.

Nothing changed dramatically other than after the series ran, they left about six months later the shelter system, and went into Section Eight housing.

So that's potentially something that maybe came as a consequence of the attention that was foisted upon this family.

But by the same token, I, I expected that attention to continue.

And yet it not only waned, it vanished to the point that I, as a reporter, continue to stay in their lives and was able to witness horrific things happening at the hands of these very agencies that you would think was, were noticing my presence.

They had not only forgotten me, they seem to have had forgotten the family.

Franklin: Yeah.

You, you got very close to Dasani and her family.

Very close.

How could you not after, you know, being with them for eight years?

And that is, you know, the traditional lines of, of journalists and subject are different than that.

Elliott: Yes.

Franklin: You know, the way that you and I were both taught... Elliott: Right.

...um, to have some sort of distance.

So did you feel that you had the distance, that you needed the journalistic distance to write the story?

Or, is that not a question that's even pertinent?

Elliott: I think every reporter- source relationship is its own mysterious, uh, kind of being.

What is clear to me is I experienced a real evolution in how I understand my role from the beginning of this process until now.

At the very beginning, I think I leaned on distance and boundaries as the kind of comfortable safeguards that protect the integrity of the work.

The way that I was trained to be as a journalist.

The, that was my go to, my default.

And I was skeptical of the presence of emotions in me or the, um, wish or desire to be close to this family, who I, of course, developed a relationship with and came to care about.

I was nervous about that.

And what I've come to see is that I think actually it should be the opposite when you're doing deep reporting.

That if you aren't connecting, if you aren't crossing emotional boundaries, in a sense, to really feel what it is that you're experiencing as a witness, then maybe something is amiss.

What I learned to do is to attend to my feelings and to not see them as the enemy, but to actually see them as a guide.

That instinct, that intuition, that emotions are a form of intelligence, actually, and they're telling you something.

And they translate into the work.

It's what readers respond to.

It's what makes a story like Dasani’s come alive.

And the distance is actually what can often feel stilted on the page or something not to trust.

I made it very clear from the very beginning that our rule, as a newspaper is that we cannot give people money, basically.

We cannot monetize this relationship.

It is, it creates huge complications.

And I've written about this in the book.

As our relationship evolved, I found myself in situations, for example, when the children were hungry, where the human in me kicked in and I had to do what I felt was right.

But it was a constant struggle and I never feel like I got it completely right.

What I did do was say to myself, If I cross any kind of line, I'm going to write about it so that I can square with the reader about sort of all of this.

I also made it really clear to the family that they were there as volunteers and that they had the full right to walk away at any point.

But this was not, um; there was no contract.

There was, they were not being paid to share their story because that would create all kinds of problems.

But among them, chief among them was their own sort of agency and freedom to walk away.

Once we were completely done, I could then share with them what I had always intended, which was to share meaningfully in any proceeds that come.

And that information is on my website.

So I, it's very, very important to me that the family benefit directly from this.

This is their story.

Franklin: So, proceeds, some of the proceeds from the book... Elliott: Yes.

Franklin: ...go to the family and the prize money?

Elliott: All the prize money went to the family.

Franklin: And there was a trust fund set up after the initial series of articles.

Elliott: Yes.

Because there was an outpouring and, uh, that would be available at this point now for the family?

Or is it, there's a trustee there has to decide?

Elliott: There is a trustee.

That information is also on my website.

And they, the family decided that the parents decided to put that money away for college.

To, to not really have access it early on.

And so it, it rarely sort of factored in their lives.

Now, I think it is more in a position to help as people continue to donate it to it.

And as I also do.

Franklin: And you read it out loud ... Elliott: To Dasani, Franklin: To Dasani... Elliott: I did.

Franklin: Which took... Elliott: Five days.

Franklin: ...five days.

And allowed her to what, change if, if something was not a fact, but maybe an inference or something, if it was wrong?

Elliott: It was very much a fact Franklin: Check, fact check.

Elliott: But also it was, I thought, what I owed her.

I felt that I needed, after she had given me everything she'd given me, which was to share her life all of those years.

I owed it to her to speak the sentences that were in the book and absorb her reaction.

And it was painful at times.

She and her sister Avianna were with me, and we had moments where we burst into tears and moments where we bowled over in laughter and everything in between.

By the end of those five days, um, we reached the very end.

I had Dasani read the last paragraph, and I actually videotaped this.

She read the last paragraph out loud and she said, “Are we at the end?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “At the end of the book?” I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Hallelujah!” And she jumped on the dining room table and started dancing.

And I think it's because she was so tired of hearing my voice and she just was so happy to be at the end.

Um, but yes, I think it was really important.

I was trying to get constantly inside her head.

And the only way you can do that is with someone's permission.

And not just permission, but a deep form of sharing.

A constant and deep form of exchange.

Dasani got so tired of me calling her up and saying, “What were you thinking in this moment?

Can you just, let's try to revisit it.” And I tried to do it as soon as I could after something had happened so that it was a fresh memory.

Because we all know that memories really flood.

Um, and so to get inside of her head and then to try to describe things from her perspective really required, um, a collaboration in a sense, of me going back and forth with her.

“This is what I've written.

I'm going to read it to you.

Tell me if something sounds wrong.” Uh, and so by the, by the time I wrote, read the book to her, I think she was very prepared.

But it was another thing to hear it.

Franklin: So many writers I talk to, inevitably their books are optioned for movies or TV series.

Is that something in the works for this?

Elliott: Dasani’s very interested in this, as is Chanel.

And so, uh, we're working as a team to hopefully see this through and make her story live in a different, uh, medium, which would be film or television.

More news to come on that.

Franklin:And finally, what do you hope people take away from this work?

Elliott: I want people to read this book and like I have experiencing it as a reporter, be unable to walk away feeling the same way about the world.

Maybe that's too big of an ask.

I want them, though, to see Dasani and then to be unable to unsee her, in a sense.

I want her to live inside of them.

Franklin: Well, she certainly did for me as I read this book.

Thank you, and congratulations again... Elliott: Thank you.

Franklin: ...on all the success with it.

And I really look forward to hearing not only from you more, but also from Dasani as she makes her way through the world.

Elliott: Thank you so much.

Franklin: Thank you.

You've been listening to Andrea Elliott, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “Invisible Child.” Our conversation was recorded at the 2023 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference.

My thanks to our team and to conference organizers for inviting us back for our 16th season at the renowned event.

If you'd like to watch any of the 75 interviews we've recorded at the conference over the years, check out our website.

You'll also find them on the “Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference” page on YouTube.

I'm Marcia Franklin.

Thanks so much for spending time with us.

(Music) Announcer: Major funding is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.