Invisible Child cover art

Invisible Child

Poverty, Survival and Hope in New York City

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Invisible Child

By: Andrea Elliott
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction 2022.

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2022.

Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolise Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani moves with her family from shelter to shelter, this story traces the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north.

Dasani comes of age as New York City's homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.

When, at age 13, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: what if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality.

©2022 Andrea Elliott (P)2022 Penguin Audio
Biographies & Memoirs Social Classes & Economic Disparity New York
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Becoming Ms. Burton cover art
Richie cover art
There Are No Children Here cover art
Can't Nothing Bring Me Down cover art
Seven Fallen Feathers cover art
Malaya cover art
Three Girls from Bronzeville cover art
I Cried to Dream Again cover art
We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders cover art
Buried Memories cover art
Uncultured cover art
In the Country We Love cover art
The Corner cover art
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace cover art
Dopesick cover art

Critic reviews

"With compassion and curiosity, [Elliott] uses the story of Dasani to make visible the cycles of poverty, inequity, and resilience that plague families across the United States.... This is a remarkable achievement that speaks to the heart and conscience of a nation." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Invisible Child

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    47
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    43
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    47
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Utterly gripping

this is a con that will go on to be an iconic story about how we lived in the early 21st century.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Heartwrenching

I loved listening to this book, it is an excellent illustration of the suffering of black Americans in the Big Apple. Something you don't expect in the first world. You can see clearly how the system is rigged against those struggling to survive. Poor Supreme, how he tried to put food on the table with the System working against him. Catch-22 made real!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

An eye-opening journey, brilliantly read

A thoroughly engaging and eye-opening journey, brilliantly narrated/read - which is so important for an audio book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Ups and downs in a chaotic but loving poverty-stricken Brooklyn family

This reportage of one large, tightly-knit, homeless family in Brooklyn is a real eye-opener into a life that most of us will never see or experience. The deep love, the coping strategies, the obstacles in the way of efforts to extract themselves from a dire shelter for the homeless shows a family reeling from crisis to crisis but never giving up . You can’t help but admire Dasani, the eldest of eight children, who is lively, bright, cheeky and the person most able to cope with her affectionate but chaotic parents and siblings.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliantly frustrating, hopeful and depressing...

As with the many years Andrea spent documenting this awful glimpse into the too many failures of the American systems, it would take me far too many words to verbalize the tornado of thoughts in my head.
My thoughts on what every person who puts out efforts to sustain a family...or couple or single loner...especially struggling middle and lower income folks. deserves to be rewarded with....a simple but comfortable home, food, ways to flourish thru hobbies and talent, support if needed, a job, apprenticeships...all the things required to envelop a spirit of belief and kindness and pride in the country they raise their flag in....
No one needs billions or many millions to live a life of privilege....somehow, finding the heart and wisdom to balance the scales of life will. in turn, create the possibility that mankind can survive in positivity..
As I approach 70, I fear that is not the direction the world is headed and for that, shame on the people who are in charge at every level.
Change takes hard work, sacrifice and perseverance.....it doesn't look good for the future....it really doesn't...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!