 Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining the new America Fellows program for this discussion of Andrea Elliott's book invisible child poverty survival and hope in an American city. I'm Brian Goldstone. I'm a class of 2021 new America National Fellow. Before we start just wanted to mention a few housekeeping notes. If you have questions during the event, please submit them through the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen, and we'll get to them in the second half of the event. Most importantly, copies of Andrea's book invisible child are available for purchase through our book selling partner solid state books, and you can find the link to buy the book on this page just click buy the book. And I very much encourage you to do that. If nothing else comes out of this event, hopefully you will push that button that says buy the book. So just want to quickly introduce Andrea, Andrea Elliott, who was a class of 2016 fellow is an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and a former staff writer at the Miami Herald. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, the George Polk Award, a Scripps Howard Award, and prizes from the overseas press club and the American Society of News Editors. She has served as an Emerson Collective Fellow at New America, a visiting journalist at the Russell Sage Foundation, and she was a visiting scholar at the Columbia Population Research Center, and she's also a recipient of the Whiting Foundation grant. In 2015, she received Columbia University's Medal for Excellence. She lives in New York City, and this is her first book. So Andrea. It's good to see you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for doing this with me. I'm so excited to talk to you about it. Thank you. Thank you. So for the people joining us who may not already know the genesis of this book was a series of articles that appeared in 2013, over five consecutive days on the front page of the New York Times. I was focused on a young girl named Desani, who, along with her parents and seven siblings was living in abysmal conditions at a family homeless shelter in Fort Greene in Brooklyn. I was actually living in New York at the time when that series was published. And I remember that for a while, pretty much every person I knew in the city seemed to be talking about this incredibly heart wrenching and infuriating portrait of child homelessness in the richest city in the richest country in the world. And I don't know if it was intended this way, but the series was very much received I think as an expose as a glimpse into a world and a space that had been intentionally kept hidden from public view, and its impact on policy and politics was absolutely huge and immediate, which which you describe a bit in the book. This book, which you went on to report for an astonishing what eight years right eight years after the publication of that original series, continuing to follow Desani and her family. It seems to have a somewhat different aim and orientation. In the books afterward, you observe that the word understand literally means to quote stand in the midst of, and if I could just quote you real quick you right to understand does not mean that we have reached some ultimate truth. I find that we have experienced enough of something new, something formerly unseen to be provoked, humbled, awakened, or even changed by it. If I did anything in my eight years with Desani, you right. It was to stand in the midst of her life. I think just as a, as a way of opening this conversation I'm wondering if you could talk about how this method, this standing in the midst of led to the book becoming what it ultimately did, and whether produced in you Andrea, a slightly different orientation, and perhaps even a different hope in how the Sony story would be received now. That's an opening question. So much, so much to unpack there. I want to just start by saying that I am feeling just a great gratitude right now to be conversing with you in this forum with New America. I was home for this book and, you know, being able to write this book. It was its own sort of story of survival I'd like to say that this book survived. It's been nearly a decade now since I entered Desani's life. It survived in large part because of the community that I found at New America and the incredible support I got there and, you know, that is such an interesting way in. The book covers this much broader story than the series. But the series was of course my way in. It was an expose because the public was prohibited from entering Auburn shelter. So Desani and her family became partners in documenting the conditions of their room and basically assisting me in my reporting until Ruth from send the photographer and I were able to finally sneak in through the back, and we stayed under cover for a year. And so it came out. But I do think I think, even back then, I wasn't after an expose, say, I was beginning what would become a very long process of immersion. And, you know, it's funny, maybe a year after that series ran, I came to New York to America, to New America to give a talk. And I remember saying in that talk, I looked it up that I was starting to feel panicked, because the more I immersed in Desani's world and dealt into the history of her family. The more I saw that this book is about, as I put it at the time, is about everything. And if I could go back to, to that version of myself back in like, I think it was 2014. I would say, it's your you're on the right track, it's actually a good sign that you're overwhelmed and even that you're panicked, because it means that you're awake to the challenge. And the major thing is to just trust in the process and the process was a process of constant surprise and yes, overwhelm. Seeing that the labels signed to Desani in the very beginning she was the homeless kid I wrote about, or she was the one in five poor children growing up in America. Those labels were so often used as a kind of destination in people's minds like that's what she is that's the way that we describe her affliction, when in fact those labels are just a door opening. So it was there an invitation to go way past that current plight, and to look at the reasons that that plight exists both in her own life and more broadly in her community, which then causes so it's like layer upon layer continue to be sort of revealed there's a series of revelations and if I look at the arc of the book you know she went from one system DHS to another system child protection ACS to another system where her brothers now Rikers facing a murder charge DOC Department of Corrections. This is the pipeline that we always talk about hear about and we talk about, she was living it in front of me and each at each juncture, I was scrambling in real time to understand this new system that I was suddenly and I thought I okay I dealt into and I studied very very closely homeless policy and and just the system in New York City in particular which is so interesting, only to find that suddenly I was in this other huge system, which was ACS. So, I think what I, you know what I started to kind of like surrender to in that being in the midst of her life was this I this notion that I am here to learn. I'm a student, and she's showing me the way every time she's basically constantly in real time, giving me what the story is. That needs to be told, if that makes any sense and so it but it often felt like this is never going to end and in fact I wrote three different endings. And all three endings are in this book, they're just, they're there now sort of certain chapters ending, but that's where I thought the book ended and else would happen. And then I thought it ended there and then something else and it happened at least three times. Interesting. Something I mentioned before we started was just how what the experience of reading this book was was like for me personally it. I said that, you know, some books resonate with with with you when you're reading it for me this book exploded it just kind of it overwhelmed me in a way that I imagine the experience of bearing witness and reporting and being in the midst of overwhelmed with you, and that you were able to transmit that sense of being in the midst of things and then you know there's there's a certain sensation when you're reading an expose or an investigation of outrage of wanting, you know, spring into action sort of thing. And of course there are moments here, really important moments that that create that effect and will will get into maybe some of those. But, but there was something more profound here I think, which is, you know, use the word everything to be in the in the everything of a human life, a human life that is not reducible to the labels that are assigned to that life that are not reducible to the statistics that illuminate and contextualize that life. There was something really really profound, I think about about that that kind of encounter that that is staged here in the book so I, you know, so I so appreciate that Brian just so so much what I hoped would would emerge in the reading experience, because in the in the reporting experience. What I felt constantly was that as opposed to some reporting I've seen out there where suffering is the central focus. It's the sort of like pulse of the story and sometimes that's needed. I'm not going to discount that my favorite work. Especially when it's dealing with disadvantaged people put suffering in the backdrop, because there's just, there's so much levity and joy and humor and revelation. There's just Sonia and Chanel and Supreme, and many others in this book Faith Hester Paul Holmes, I mean, I was. I think that that so you see just said something about how you know these the sort of them, you were getting up I think the monolithic view that some people have of the story being one thing. I think it's so important to hold these kind of seemingly contradictory truths. You know, in the story, and able to see that there's there's there's joy and suffering all at once. It's all extend that this family is many things right because every human as you put it that everything and you're writing. And you're following several families, homeless families, which by the way, I can't imagine. I can't imagine it like what that because one family was so overwhelming and so hard. But it is so essential to embrace all these other these parts right that that are make it complex and confusing at times, and, and then just putting it on the page and see what it does in terms of narrative. Totally. Yeah, I mean, that's actually a really good segue into into another question I had for you which so one really striking thing about about this book, especially having read the series you know as I mentioned when it came out is how the book expands both it expands temporally into the past, and of course into the future but this this this history isn't just this like adornment to the narrative it's not just a way of thickening thickening the story. The family history that you're able to excavate gives the book from the very beginning of the book, this extremely haunting recursive quality. We learn, for instance, the beginning that the shelter where at Auburn the shelter where the son in our family are living is the very place where her grandmother, Joanie was born back when it was a hospital. Here's the moment when Chanel and Supreme are meeting with child protective services and we learned that this is the same office where supreme dishonest father stepfather himself was processed as a boy. Sometimes this history has the effect of showing the many contingencies that led to this family circumstances, all of the ways that it didn't have to be this way, all the ways that you know this tiny shift in another direction, had Brooklyn been redlined in the way it was had jobs been, you know union jobs been available to designies, I believe great grandfather. She may not be living in the shelter at this at this moment. In fact, we see it once like the contingencies and also weirdly, we, we, there are times that this history creates a sense of inevitability of a cycle, continuing unabated uninterrupted, and this kind of repetition of this. We're back in the same place where this previous generation was. Um, so I guess my question is like at what point did it become clear to you that this history this deep deep history would need to be a central part of the books narrative. And more importantly, how has widening this historical lens, and the way you've done here how how has widening the lens, given you a perception of poverty that you might not have had otherwise. Maybe even a perception that wasn't there in the original series. So this question, I would start by saying that family is the universe of the book designies the protagonist but family is the broader universe of her of her life. And it's not just her present family. It is what I would call the spirits of her past family which are living very, very, very much inside her every day. I would talk and constantly about Joanie who died when she was in her fifties, tragically young. That was her grandmother. And then I would hear these stories about June Sykes her great grandfather and in the beginning they were vague they were things like you know he drank a lot and then he would tell these crazy stories about seeing the women's role in the war and the war and I kept hearing about the war. And in designies immediate family. No one really knew the story. And so, with their help and you know we got more than 14,000 records at the end of the day. Just this massive trove, in part because to be poor is to be monitored, and they're a very long paper trail. In that trove where his veterans affairs, he finally got his file I think it took eight months. And there, I unearthed with the family, and we were stunned to see it was just this extraordinary history that this guy June, short for junior, who'd been born in Goldsboro, North Carolina 1920. His own great grandfather had been born enslaved. So I with the help of genealogist went back through history to kind of just because I think so much of the story isn't that necessarily small things could have made a big difference I think that there is a huge story of racism that this story that this family and I know you know this like encountered in such it, the barriers were so overwhelming to transcending the working class, because of these racist structures that and you can really see that story with him. It's interesting because Desani actually more Chanel and Supreme her parents were always talking to me, always, almost every day about slavery. And about the history of slavery and this is way before it became a more central and necessary part I would argue of course of American public discourse this was way before George Floyd was in the very beginning. It was, and I, I just felt that the history was so this history was so alive in them, and so much a part of our conversation and, and, and, and, you know noticing the street names in Brooklyn that were names of families that had been involved in this and as many survivors, you know had enslaved people in Brooklyn, I mean that that was. So, going back to June you know he's born in 1920. He finds his way out of Goldsboro by joining the military the height of World War two. He is a Buffalo soldier so this is when it was still segregated and leaves Jim Crow South to go abroad as part of this all black regiment. The first infantry, the only interim infantry the 92nd infantry and his was the 3370th combat regiment the first to land in Europe, the only infantry to fight in Europe, all black infantry, and he survived three battles. He helped liberate two Italian towns. He returned with three bronze service stars and two medals back into having fought fascism and Nazi totalitarianism abroad returns to a place where you can't get a mortgage if you're black, where you can't go to college, where even if you are a veteran who has survived with all these accolades, you're denied the very GI Bill supports that lifted millions of white veterans into the middle class, and is largely credited with creating the middle class. And you see this in the 50s so June is stuck renting he winds up in the housing projects that Desani would come to to call the projects right but this was in the beginning of different kind of for green and by the time that Desani is born in that shelter which was the hospital where her grandmother was born. And I'm just, I'm so interested also in your work Brian because you've looked at some of these same trends in places like Salinas, where, you know, homelessness is suddenly skyrocketing but at the same time that wealthier people are coming in and driving up rents, wages are stagnant. And the outsider could look at Desani and that moment in time 2012 Bloomberg's been in office now he's nearing the end of his third term. Homelessness has jumped up by 80% in the city in that period. And you'd see her as this random transplant into the shelter and for green when actually, actually the homeless girl has a birthright a clean. Historically, to this neighborhood that is deeper goes for four generations back then almost anyone I met in for green. And yet she's there because she just happens to be there at the shelter but she's she's there in terms of history she's there. She's walking through the playgrounds and going to the same well in library that her grandmother went to play double in the same streets running the same way that Joanie ran, you know, doing races and trying to figure out if she had the goods to get out because the escape narrative is another big part of what I examine I think, maybe I don't have to do it in a fourth rate manner in this book but I feel like Desani story challenges that narrative of the escape from poverty that we seem to venerate so often that you know, we love that one kid who made it out by a plant or athleticism or willpower or, you know, you know, some kind of stroke of luck and that is so often the story that that we celebrate and I think part of that is about the fact that it, it lets everyone off the hook it sort of says like, Well if you have enough talent or willpower you can do it. And therefore we're going to focus on this one child who made it out versus all these other children, thousands of others who are just as capable just as well. But once you start to look at why they didn't get out you're forced to reckon with the barriers that are so much greater than any one child's potential, right. And you know Desani would struggle with this because she she also of course was the recipient of that narrative of like, maybe if you if you become like an amazing runner, you know, you'll get discovered you'll you know coach will find you and ask you maybe it's rap, maybe it's, you know, it's these limited paths out. And I think by the time the book ends which is this year by the way ends in 2020 how hard it was to end and I finally just had to hit send. You know she's now in a place where she's trying to reconcile these two opposite forces one is you love your family you're loyal to your family or families everything and the other is. Don't you need to reach past them to get to something better. And I think her answer is I want both. I don't have to leave I don't have to escape. I want to thrive here in my in my home with, if even if I'm homeless it's home and she is more at home in New York than most people I know. You know, I want to make it work in this setting and in this context and not having to sound a different way dress a different way, behave a different way which was much of the message she got when she briefly tried to leave by going to this boarding school didn't work. Yeah, I just that I think one of the strongest rejoinders to that escape from poverty sort of narrative which, which I'm sure was totally you know wrapped up in the reception of the original series it was the expectation that the sonny would now be this. This exemplar of, you know that this kind of symbol of an escape from poverty. One of the moments in the book, where I think that is just really in a very subtle way. Another example is when Miss Hester, the sonny's, the sonny's teacher, who herself has kind of stood as this kind of escape from the projects that this kind of story, I mean, in part, a story that she herself has has created and and perpetuated and I think it's a complicated question to is how much of that narrative is also built into the kind of, you know, into the school into what the kind of what Miss Holmes, the kind of message that she was giving which isn't at all like a bad narrative it's it's just there and I think it's something that there's yeah it's something very American it's very, but in any case Miss Hester herself, who the children look at as this. You know, she if she could do it we could do it. She ends up getting evicted and she's going to homeless services. And that moment was just, I mean it was just absolutely crushing but also so important because it serves to show how utterly pervasive this is, and also how, like you said these aren't small little, you know historical forces that are stacked against these lives these are gigantic forces these are. I mean, yeah what what stood behind that moment of Miss Hester getting evicted as an entire universe of of injustice of property being placed before human lives and so yeah. I was, you know, I'm so glad you brought that up I haven't talked about this yet. And there's so much to talk about and so it's, you know, I'm just grateful that you brought this up. I was there the day she was evicted and yes it was absolutely crushing. It was not a story that faith felt ready to share for a long time and so it was not in the book. She was in the book she's an incredible beacon. At the very very end of this process. I went back to her and showed her the book. And I said this is entirely of course your decision but if your story becomes a part of this narrative becomes a lot harder to simply dismiss the Sonny's population as the unworthy poor, because if it can happen to you. Oh my God it can happen to anyone. And she sat with that for a while, and she decided to very briefly allow this to be included and she's been an incredible advocate for the story and been speaking at some events and stuff and she's just she's a remarkable human being. Yeah, I just I remember that there's a scene and in the book where the Sonny and Evian return from their umpteenth shelter I think it's the eighth shelter they lived in at that point to all of commuting so chronic absenteeism is a common fact. Among the homeless right among homeless children. Their commutes are crazy and they were commuting from the Bronx at that point going back and they to Brooklyn and they reported to school that first day in 2014. And what you don't know in that scene you see Miss Hester in that scene, dressed in her most professional outfit and holding forth and telling her students. I need to hear here is where this is home now this classroom because it is it was at least a parallel home for so many of her students, but you don't know that she's actually just, she's just commuted from her shelter that morning. It's a, and a third of parents in the shelter system in New York City, which is hovering around 50,000 right now the main shelter system are working. And you said this in one of your stories that you've written about homelessness that the phrase the working homeless you believe this will become common. You know, a kind of, I agree. I think that there's that should be a label that we that we we brought in the label to that because we're going to use labels that's a very accurate accurate one to describe the state of homelessness today. Um, so, yeah, I, I see we're, we're getting close to the point where we'll start to take questions and but I'm trying to combine two questions so there are many sentences in this book that hit me in just a totally visceral way. But one in particular stands out and it seems to capture something essential about the book. I'll stop thinking about the sentence. The line comes about three quarters of the way through the book as Chanel, the Sonny's mom is going to stay at a shelter after the judge bars her from being with her kids and her husband. And this is a single women shelter, but the women living there, as you write, are not single so much as severed. That, that line just seems to capture so much about what this book is ultimately a portrait of it's a portrait of, as you said earlier to be to be poor is to be surveilled. It's to be monitored to be poor as this book shows us is also to be severed. It's to be, it's to be pulled apart. And what goes on after that that scene, the, there's no other word for it that the sort of stunning violence of the children being taken away from supreme and Chanel, and in the surrounding context of that is it's made clear to the reader that that this is nothing but justice. This is an indictment of ACS the administration for children services. And you talk about how, you know, Bill Clinton's role in passing the crime bill is often given you know all the attention. This isn't given attention is is role in passing the adoption and say families act, which is is part of what allows this violence to take place. And I'm using the word violence that's not your words I don't want to impose that on you. Just two questions here to combine, you know, two different registers, one about kind of the reporting process. And the other, you know about what the book is doing on a more kind of argumentative or conceptual level, you know in terms of policy, but first, you know what, what was it like for you, Andrea, to be there in real time and witnessing this incredibly traumatizing moment up close. I'm so glad. Yeah. And then the other question is just like, like, ACS. I mean, is. Yeah, maybe it's just like, that was definitely a moment where it's just like, what the fuck, like this is just straight up evil. And I'm wondering if that was an effect that was intended and whether yeah so those two kinds of questions one about that sort of severing and just what it was like to witness this up close. So, I want to just start by saying ACS like all of these other systems are human constructs. And there are people who work at ACS who make damaging decisions and there are people who work at ACS who make heroic decisions. The code depends it's, it goes down when we talk about contingencies and whims there on the front lines, the whims. It's also true with welfare, you know, HRA I mean, the people who are interact interfacing with the sony's family on a daily basis are truly the people to be, I think, involved in making any kind of policy changes as part of the conversation they wield tremendous power and they also have incredible amounts of insight, the system. There is definitely the book takes a very hard look at what ACS is more broadly a part of. So what what ACS which is New York City's Child Protection Agency can't control is the fact that it relies so heavily on federal funds, and the federal government gives 10 times as much to programs that separate families the vast majority of them black and brown, then to keeping families together. Right there, you know that, you know, this is part of a broader conversation about where we spend our funds and truth is that I'm struck most by the fact that the sony's siblings, her family was her ultimate system of survival right this was the central thing that kept that made life okay. And it was through this system of family and sibling bonds that they were able to navigate these other systems that were externally imposed upon them or that they signed up for in a sense by accepting benefits even though this is also a family that refused certain benefits, like many poor families and that's another assumption that I think people have that's incorrect that poor people don't want to work. First of all they're working every day they're just not working in the way that the labor, formal labor labor market acknowledges as work. But getting back to, you know, this is a family that the children were removed from their home. Just that act, as we know from looking at what happened to migrant children on the border and all of our attention of late, looking at the trauma of separation is definitive, it's a huge step to make in when you're disrupting a family, this is the consequence. They went from their home into a foster care system that wound up spending on average about $33,000 a month on this family alone just on these eight children. I'm just, it's interesting to be like if you took a, and actually the person to point this out to me was one of the case workers who to my mind is emerges as one of the small heroes in this book Linda Lowe, she was working for founding the Prevention Service. And she said, look, if you took just a fraction of that amount and put someone in the home like the visiting nurse program, which is, you know, we know it has incredible results. But just to help, you know what what Chanel and Supreme needed, I do believe is not parenting classes they didn't need parenting classes. They needed someone to work the phones, they needed, maybe a lawyer, or illegally, this is for somebody who could help them get their, the conditions of their homes, you know that the problems the leak fixed, and their children were removed on neglect allegations. The vast majority in New York City, 93% of families face only neglect charges neglect is different, you know there's two forms of child maltreatment abuse and neglect abuse, which is 2% abuse only by the way is about inflicting physical harm, it's about, I think it's about intentionality neglect is failure is failure to provide shelters failure to provide adequate clothing or food or to get your kid to school on time and, and these are, you know the problems of poverty. And so there is a case to be made that fan poor families are being pleased. And to go back. So I sort of answered the second question first. I was texting with my dear friend Casey Parks, who now writes for the Washington Post she's, I think she's with us today. I was just texting with her this morning about. We all do a lot of listening to music to get us through stuff or sometimes to just, she made me an amazing mix CD, or mix, not, oh yeah, but if you're on. If you get to receive one of Casey Parks is now she's going to be bombarded playlists you are very lucky. Yes, and I was just sharing with her this morning we were talking about, you know, stuff and it's not something I've really said yet to anyone but you know that day that I was there the day that Lee Lee, the baby was removed from her father and, and all the kids, but I didn't see those removals I saw hers. You know, I don't want to ever make the narrative around this book about me, or what it was like for me. It's, it's, it's really just. I want to spend every second I can every platform talking about them and what it was like to be them or what their story is. I want to say that. I mean, I listened to purple rain on repeat for three weeks after that to the point where my own children were like okay she's gone nuts, like, can we listen to something else please just the song again and again and again and again. I don't even know how to describe what that was how that impacted me except to say that it changed me completely as a human. And I think. But as when we're reporting these stories, we're very hard on ourselves journalists and also ethnographers. There's a sense that you have to kind of like keep your humanity in check. And you're there to do your work and if you somehow allow all this overwhelming stuff in that you're somehow going to do less of a good job. And I actually think it's the opposite I think there's a close relationship between powerful writing and empathy. And that doesn't mean you're biased. I think the closer you get to your subjects the more work you have to do in the editing room to make sure you know and show it to a lot of people and have them push back at you, and question yourself. And with that feeling those raw kind of emotions that inform us as humans, as we can help be our human self, can then actually make the writing sort of more present for the reader, I think, and it's, it's just the fact. I learned I think over time to just create space for these two things to be true that I'm there as a reporter and that I am there as a human being. And it was complicated, it was always complicated and it's not something I feel like I've figured out entirely it's something I'm always wrestling with. But I also think that is part of the answer is to just never get completely comfortable with that. Tension and to just just to see it and to keep thinking about it and talking about it even with your, with your subjects. Yeah, yeah. So that actually so one of the questions that has come up from the audience is from Kevin sack who's a former New fellow. Hi, Kevin. New York Times colleague. And his question very much flows from what we were just talking about he. He says, reporter intrusion becomes a challenge when you embed for a decade. How did your present shape events and how did you handle that journalistically. And I guess like just yet to. I know you've you've been talking about that already but in, you know, there are parts in the book like where Dasani came to stay at your apartment when, when people were out to kill her. When, when a right again was, was threatening to murder her and so she comes and stays at your place. That's a very clear and you don't make. You don't hide that in the book and just the reader is made aware that there's a chance that she would have been killed, had she not come to stay with you. And, and yet there are other moments like we were, you know, just describing what the children being taken away where, where it seems that that events are allowed to take place. So, you know, I think Kevin is asking a broader question just about, you know, how does your presence, you know, shape the flow of things but but maybe we could even make it more particular about, you know, these kinds of things. How did you know this is a time that I need to, I need to stop this from happening or this is a time when I, I have to just kind of allow things to take their course because otherwise it won't, I will no longer be observing or documenting or I will be directly shaping the reality. I think part of the reason that I was able to observe so much and take a backseat was that I knew the family was being so carefully monitored. It just felt like my role was to watch the monitoring. Like, if nobody was around, you know, I'm trying to think of an example where I had to, I had to cross that line. I think the line for me, usually was around food. And if I saw abject hunger. And with the children, I felt like I had to give them something to eat. And I did that. I would bring groceries sometimes or, you know, at the times, we had this policy where we take our sources out to eat. I was reporting that initial story. I felt like, why, why aren't we going out to eat like we should be going to these nice restaurants that I know city hall reporters take their sources and so I did that once. I went with Chanel to this fancy restaurant on the New York Times. She kept complaining about the bill and like how I could spend $15 for a hamburger. Come on, Jerry, I could do this, I could do that. Anyway, I think there's two, there's three major things I want to say about this. One is that the night that Desani came to stay with me is a perfect example I think like my rule of thumb is if I did do something that had a kind of cause and effect, I would write about it. So that's an example. I mean, I couldn't not do that for her. She needed a safe haven. So that's the next day. But where I encountered a real sort of struggle was when I was visiting her at Hershey that was before this happened. After her mother had lost custody of her and she was now in the custody Desani of ACS. And there was a court order preventing Chanel from visiting Desani. And Chanel understandably felt really upset that I got to see her daughter but she didn't. And that was a time when I had to say, I know you want to come with me. I know it would be easy for you to jump in my car. We could probably get away with taking Desani to a diner. I would be violating a court order and I can't do that. Yeah. And that was a crisis moment for sure. And it ended up getting remedied because the agency monitoring Chanel's parents, my parenting and supervising her visits arranged for a visit with her and Desani but there were there are lines, you know, I also want to say that I'm very reluctant to take credit for the things that happened for Desani. For example, you know, she was discovered by this fitness guru giant. I wasn't there. That was one of the very few instances in which actually I was there early that day with the family at this event. I left before this scene where she meets giant. And I had both giant and Desani and Chanel and everyone around me, you know, reconstruct that to the best of their abilities. People wondered later in the series, you know, like she got this great break, is it because he knew that you were there. No, he saw this kid was incredibly talented. Did Hershey let Desani in because they saw kind of media opportunity possibly. I'd never heard of the school this was entirely her principles idea. Yes, though, it is possible. But from what actually happened or, you know, I mean, I think to the extent that we can acknowledge our role and keep ourselves in the story without centering it on us in any way. I think that's really important. I think that the biggest takeaway for me about how my presence in their life may or may not have impacted the story was in the conversations I would have with Chanel over the years in which I would say to her, things like I am the author of this book but you are the author of your life. Whatever you do next I'm going to be writing about. She knew that did that impact her decision making it may have. Did it cause her to choose more wisely or, or to not do things that she wanted to do. It's possible. I can speak to that. The family was very, very, very prepared for the book by the time it came out I actually spent five days reading it to Desani and Aviana together. And I wanted to see their faces and I also wanted them to ask me about any words that didn't make sense and some of the policy stuff or whatever it is, or, and also to just check for issues of tone and accuracy and to really feel like this was and by the time we did that, you know, the scenes in which Desani got so tired of me saying what were you thinking in that moment because I wanted to be able to get inside her head as much as possible, which is an impossible thing to do without a deep interaction with your subject right where you're constantly, you know, writing something down, reading it to them does this sound right what doesn't sound right. There were parts of the book. There was nothing in this book that this family asked me to take out. It was extraordinary and Chanel said to me. There are two very funny things that happened one was when the Chanel said to me, being reported on by you is a little bit like having an autopsy done when you're still alive, like every part of my being is being examined. And she was, I don't know. And how many of us could like withstand that kind of ourselves. Absolutely. I would never be able and Desani at the end of the five days when we got to the last line she said this is the last line I said yes, and she jumped on top of my dining room table and started dancing. And it's not because she liked the ending. I mean she was fine with the last line but she was just so relieved. I will just say a Denrelé Ojo who is this incredible narrator is the audible voice of the book and she's exquisite and it's such a joy to hear her to hear these words and in her voice. I do not possess those talents. I think it was just like so sick of it by the end. Yeah, I think they were prepared and they, they knew what this book was before they got to read it. So that was really important. So, with the five minutes we have left. I wanted to try to combine a couple of these questions, and you could just kind of decide what to take up. So, so Rita asks about, you know, if there's one message that you hope enders after readers encountered this book. What would that be. Someone asks an anonymous attendee asks, will you continue to stay in touch with Desani. And I would just ask, you know, you've, you've now spent nine years, eight years, nine years with this family with Desani this. As I mentioned at the beginning, I mean this is more than just an act of reporting or an active journalism I mean this is not to be sentimental about it but it's clearly an act of love it's an act of, of witnessing of presence. How are you feeling now to have this out in the world. So, yeah, what what is that like to be talking about Chanel and supreme and decide. I know there's a risk of them becoming these abstracted characters and not the flesh and blood people that you presumably I assume you will continue to stay in touch with just what so what what what is this like for you right now so any of those questions and I'll just kind of let you let you take that. I mean I, I talked to them every day. They remain very embedded in my life just as I embedded in theirs and I don't want that to be a relationship that ends. The reporting relationship is over. I think Desani Desani deserves a break from being written about at this point. She's relieved to have a segue into just a clear friendship versus my role being these two hats that you wear where you're the human you're also the reporter and you're somebody who has big feelings of caring and of admiration and also of sadness at times for that person but also that those things are in service of a story that she very much cared about getting out there. The fact that that is behind us is is kind of a relief, I think I, but I very much hope to stay in their lives. I don't even hope I know we will I do believe we will. I think that the big takeaway for me is that you can't really read Desani story and continue to hold on to these blanket assumptions that people make about the poor. I think she forces a reckoning with those assumptions. Family is everything to all of us. This is a universal story. I mean that's another thing I will say it's a story that has it's a family saga, we all have families Mary car once said that the definition of a dysfunctional families any family with more than one member. I can read this book and relate. Part of the thing that bonded Desani, and I very early on was when she would hear me, you know, bickering with my mother in Spanish on the phone and she loved that we were, you know that I had a mother from Chile and that she had a father biological father who is half Dominican and that was like a point of connection but it was also just the fact that she could see that I could get really annoyed and I rolly with my mom. So sort of the two a street of reporting in that sort of revealing of yourself is, I think so important to a project like this. But that's in token I think I want people to take away from the book that, you know, at the at the sort of like heart of this story is is this family that when we talk about the cycle of poverty. We're getting about the cycle of power that is so central to this family. There are many positive cycles here of resilience of survival. And also just, can people begin to challenge their traditional notion of what it means to be happy of what it means to be successful. Do we impose upon a kid like the sunny this expectation that she must leave the community in order to attain attain those things, rather than focusing on fixing the things in those communities that make thriving and just simple financial terms or in terms of health possible. And so I, I think that it's that and I think at the end of the day, if this book is about anything, you know, when you, when you, when you really think about what it's about, that all the themes that fall under this rubric of poverty. You know, things like homelessness, things like educational attainment, chronic unemployment, unemployment, drug addiction which by the way cuts across class and race in America as we well know now. And the form of self medication gentrification, all of those things. I would, I would say this, I would say that this book is about belonging, and it's about more specifically, who gets to belong to a place and who doesn't. And that's what I hope people will take from it. I'm really, really interested in hearing everything that it brings up in people because that's that's that sort of afterlife of the book writing process is seeing what things you weren't even aware of that the book inspired. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, Andrea, thank you for the gift of this book. Thank you for the gift of, of making clear the work that remains to be done that this story is still being written and that everyone who encounters this story has now a responsibility, and it is now going to be held accountable because the story continues to be written. And that's definitely something that that I as a reader took away from this. Thank you. Thank you for the gift of this conversation as well. Thank you to everyone who joined us, and everyone take care.