I was just saying a little worried because other people may want hire her away. I dont want that other cities. Please dont do that, tony. Shes going to be leading the conversation. A few months ago, tanisha handed me a book and it like she and i book recommendations. This is kind of a regular thing. But this is the first time one of us had actually, like, bought a book and handed it to other person. And that book was invisible child by andrea elliott. And tunisia is very much this books evangelist in a marvel of immersive journalism, eliot followed the daily plight of a homeless family to parents and eight children in new york city. In fact, she practically became part of the family, all by embedding herself with them for eight years at the heart, the story is dasani the eldest daughter, a young teen full of personality, charm and moxie. We see dasani care for her siblings and navigate complex relationships with her parents, both of whom genuinely seem to love their kids, but also suffer from Substance Abuse and likely Mental Health challenges. We observe life at school, her life at various shelters, the obstacles of getting from place to place on the new york Transit System and the challenges of finding and obtaining stable housing opportunities for advancement are scarce for dasani, but when they do arise. The central question of this book becomes will she able to break free from the cycle of poverty . And i will say the story gut wrenching is utterly it is a page turner and not to mention its a really good book from a Public Policy standpoint. For me, the book reshaped my worldview and deepen my understanding of homelessness and life in shelters. And im so glad all of you are here today to be part of this conversation and give it the consideration it deserves. So our guest of honor is andre elliot, who is an Investigative Reporter for the New York Times. Not only did win the nonfiction pulitzer for this book, invisible child, she had earlier won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Thus has become the first woman ever win individual Pulitzer Prizes in both journalism and arts and letters that deserves a round of applause. And add that to a slew of other awards would take me a long, long time to list. So i wont. I think you get the point, Andrea Andrea elliott is an elite and storyteller who spends time bringing us some of our societys most urgent stories. Were so lucky to have her with us today. Welcome, andrea elliot. Wow. How about the best mayor of the best city the world today . Thank you. Just. Thank you. I am so ive been anticipating this discussion for months. Id heard about New York Times series back in 2013. I didnt engage then. I heard about the book when it was released. And i also resisted reading it. Then and then it was recommended to me probably three or four times. And so finally last summer, i relented and i decided read the book. Now, the reason i rejected the book is because maybe some like you kind of tired the same approach to these stories of poverty. They tend to to be the same. They tend to have some of the same endings, same heroines or heroes, same approaches. And no one comes away with anything different. That was that was an issue for me. And one of the reasons i avoided it, but also because i myself live the childhood of of intense poverty and people tell the story. Right. From my perspective im overly critical of of storytelling. Once i read this book i have to tell. Not only did you resist the trap that that trap all writers who really are trying to do a good thing, they fall into this trap of the same old thing. You found a way. Give this family and their plight the and honor it deserved. I think the reader has to come away with a sense of a different understanding a challenge to these notions that we hold fast to why people are in poverty and they have these challenges and i, i have to say thank you to decided and should now for opening up to but also to you for being brave enough to push and chase this story. It is an important one. It is compelling. It will be a, i think, for anyone who wants to understand the plight of for not just children, but our society. And so thank you. I have to start there. Thank you so much. What im beautiful. Introduction by the mayor and and you i feel so honored to be today and i especially appreciate that you by thanking dasani and chanel because that is where i that is my point of departure every time that if not for them theyre encouraged able act of bravery vis a vis their willingness to be vulnerable which is in their world a dangerous thing that because they did that and allowed me in this story was able to be born in book form. It exists in many other forms, but in book form. Yeah. I cannot wait to dive into this with you. Ive been fangirling all day, so forgive if if i come apart at some point. But weve already had some really conversation and i hope that our conversation today helps you whether. Youve read the book or you plan to read it. I think this will be a really important conversation. So we heard a little bit about this jon nese journey with judds introduction, but why dont you tell about her . How do we get here . How we get to decide any story in book. Yes. Yes. Okay. So this dasani on the cover. This photograph was taken a months after i met in the fall of 2012. I was standing outside a homeless shelter in brooklyn trying interview families when her family walked out. And she, in particular just jumped out at me. I began following them and and in those early days when wanted to understand was what did it mean to be growing deeply poor in the richest country in the world and in one of the richest cities, the richest city actually the city with the richest collection of billionaires. This is true in the entire world that there was such a chasm between the rich and the poor. And how was that playing out in the lives of children in particular because we had the highest and continue have the highest Child Poverty rate of most advanced countries. How did we get there. I was wondering the same thing and thats what what me to dasani and into her life and you know what i will say is this book covers a lot of really difficult terrain. Dasani is survivor of many things beyond her control and. Shes a winning person. Shes somebody whos always trying to win. I dont see this, though, as catalog of sorrows. I her story, the throughline her story as one of joy. And thats kept me in their lives all of those years. I always wanted to be there. I found them electrifying and funny, captivating and in the videos and these, you know. So i felt really lucky to be to be with them. Yes. All these years. Yeah. You cant you cant not read book and come away with just a love of design. I think we all if youve read it. Youre a dasani fan. Yes and i think theres a passage that you kind of describe. Yes. Because for her. Okay. So its not a short book. I will. By saying that it could be a doorstop. Right. Its its the length of a president ial and i believe that it is worth every bit as much that her life worth every bit as much. I dont just say that from a place of principle but from a place of intellectual seeking that her life in terms of history, terms of policy, in terms of oral narratives about survive all about struggle, about intergenerational poverty lends itself that kind of scope. So the passage im going to read to you, the last passage i wrote, and it took me, i think all these years to write it and it just gets at the book is about. And i this by saying i was trying to figure out how to write this passage and writers tend to look to other writers for guidance and one of the greats out there is robert caro, who has written books about Lyndon B Johnson and his of the books that he wrote about president johnson. He had a passage that began to understand Lyndon Baines johnson, to know the 36th president of the United States of america is to understand the character of the nation. And so in a very deliberate both to him, to the place that to sonnys life deserve, i will read you this quick passage. Know dasani, Lashawn Coates to follow this childs life from her first breaths in a Brooklyn Hospital to the full bloom of adulthood is to reckon with the story of new york city and beyond its borders with america itself. It is a story that begins at the dawn of, the 21st century in a Global Financial capital, riven by inequality. It is also a story that reaches in time to one black family making way through history, from slavery to the jim gross crow south, and then the great migrations. Passage north. There is no separating dishonest childhood from that of her matriarchs. Her grandmother, joanie, and her mother chanel. Their fleeting triumphs and deepest sorrows are, in disneys words. My heart, the ground beneath her once belonged to them. Her city is paved over theirs. It was in brooklyn. Chanel was also named for a fancy sounding bottle spotted in a magazine 1978. Back then from the ghettos, isolated corners perfume ad was the portal to a better place. Today, dasani lives surrounded by wealth. Whether shes into the boho chic shops near shelter or surfing the internet on its shared computer. She sees out to a world that rarely sees her. To see dasani. To see all the places of her life from the corridors of school to the Emergency Rooms of hospitals, to the crowded vestibules of family, court and welfare. Some places are more felt than seen. The place of homelessness, of sisterhood of a mother, child. Bond that nothing can break. They dwell within dasani wherever she goes to follow dasani, as she comes of age, is to follow her seven siblings, whether they are riding the bus, switching trains, climbing steps or jumping puddles, they always move as one only together. Have they learned to navigate povertys systems . Ones with names suggesting help. Child protection and public assistance. Criminal justice. Services. To watch these systems play out into sandys life is glimpse their power. Their flaws and the threat they pose to disneys own system of survival. Her siblings greatest solace their separation her greatest fear. This is created other forces beyond her control. Hunger. Violence. Racism. Homelessness parental drug addiction. Pollution segregated schools. Any one of these afflictions could derail a promising child as dasani grows up. She must contend with them all. Okay. Thank you. Theres a lot there that we will try to spend a little time. I want to spend a tiny bit of time on systems. Yeah. And well talk a little bit that. But i think one of the there are lots of things jump out for me. The the familys love for one another is one. And how that permeates you know, it permeates the stories of permeates the books but also the way that you found a way to balance sort of their life story and how sits in the context of the of their family and the history of the country, right . Yes. Can we talk a little bit about that . Yes. I mean, is a reflection of my own often very humbling, not utterly humiliating journey as a student of their lives. This is what we have to do is, journalists. We have to go in with an idea, a general idea of why the people we are following or the place we are writing about matters. But also holding sort of in balance, sort of these two contradictory things, this idea of why it matters and that we really dont know what the story is. You you must go in open because thats our job. And what i thought was writing about when i met dasani was this label that we give to people to be homeless suggests a current plight, a current condition. Something thats happening now. And it was it was happening to dasani then and there she was also poor. Poverty, another label. But what i began to realize is like with each label i pulled back was more and more and more and more history. And more links to the past that explain the present that you couldnt understand her homelessness without going back in the history of her family to see what had happened to them that brought them there. And so i think that thats so much a part of why i wanted to situate her story in broader Historical Context was to force people to see beyond these labels. And because what are the labels do they. I mean, you. You can help me here. What do you think these i mean, they kind of force us. I mean, i think they they definitely allow us to step back and see things as a system, an other thing. Right. Thats not something thats personalized, thats not human. And they put the onus on the person they do. They do. Which is, again one of one of the reasons im an evangelist for the book is that i think you do such brilliant job of helping us reexamine this context of personal responsibility and accountability, and certainly dasani herself and parents, dont make all of the right decisions all the time. But you help us see the urgency of their struggle, their everyday crises, and how that sort of competes with trying to be grounded and think about the future these things that we blame parents for, not right the parents of the of the poor children their children because their parents are bad. Right. Right. You know, its one thing to kind of like do the research which is what i tend to do in the beginning of any project call. All the experts read the studies. And its another thing to be in the trenches with, the people youre writing about. And what found so striking was early on hearing about abraham maslow, the 1940 psychologist who talks about the Human Experience as pyramid. This is often taught as a pyramid. Its called his hierarchy of needs. The deep hierarchy needs that in order for of us to achieve our utmost, which is the top of the pyramid, we have to have the things at the base at the very base of the pyramid are like basic physiological things, like housing, water, shelter. And then after you have those basic things, housing, water, shelter, food, then you feel safe safety comes next. And after safety, you begin to achieve things like love, belonging. And only after that and after that, selfactualization we all want to be at the top and we want for everyone you would assume we all basically want that for everyone. Right . But the poor tend to be blamed for not having actualized, right. Having selfactualization without, understanding that they cant because theyre consumed with the crumbling bottom. Right. With being able if you are and this is what i saw day in day out living with being in their lives standing in welfare line for four, 8 hours, watching them get logged of their shelter and having to ride the train all night. Just the things that they went through completely occupied their brains to the point where there was no bandwidth left for planning for dreaming. It was just about survival. And in act of survival, there was incredible amounts of innovation and, you know, i think these small daily miracles that just go unnoticed that that were were striking to me. But, you know, so i, i really wanted to show that in this book what its like to live in that constant state of of stress and how it impacts the brain how it impacts the body, how it gets in the way and how a child like the sunny tries to circumvent it. But in the very beginning, i will say i wanted to avoid the adults because i think was afraid of the public reaction. Were talking about the politics of. I wanted to reach as wide audience as i could with the series ran that book that led to this book being born and these are New York Times readers. But i wanted it to try to reach many people beyond the New York Times as i could. Didnt matter to me where anybody was. I wanted this to be a story that mattered to everyone. Because no matter you are politically, you cant deny that there are now more than 13 million children in america living in poverty. Thats the stakes are very bad for, really, for the future. Its not a thing when you have one fifth of your future workforce. Growing up in adversity, its its a costly problem. It means greater costs in terms of lack of participation in the labor market, in terms of everything from Health Problems to homelessness to incarceration. So there is a social scientists that i believe his name is robert mack, who estimates that the cost of Child Poverty in america is 1 trillion per year in of lost opportunities in the labor market and all of these other things. And so so so its a problem we can all agree its a problem how to fix might be what ends up being up for debate and yet when we write about poor people the response tends to be one of blame. And yet these children, you cant argue theyre to blame, right . Theyre kids. They didnt theyre not responsible. And so my initial approach was just sort of write about them in this Charlie Brown way, where the adults became like were like they just were in the background. They didnt exist. They didnt have a voice. It was just the kids, just the kids. And this was one very compelling kid. But then all these years later, i in a different place. Yeah, that yeah. And and were glad you were glad you. So this is a black right lets lets put the obvious on the table here. Yes. This is a black family. I, i grew up in a similar way. Right. We dont tend to trust outsiders, particularly those are white presenting right authority figures. All of those things. This is how you show up, this family. How do you get so how do you build this trust . How did they let you in . Yeah, i in the beginning, i mean, yes. So i came as far as design is concerned from a different i look different, i talk different. I had never experienced homelessness. Id gotten to go to graduate school. I belonged to the establishment. I was there with my card from the New York Times. I couldnt have been more different. And in the beginning, her mother send the kids out because she didnt have a working phone and say check it the white ladys there. They run out, they come back. You, jamar, shes still there. Oh, it. And finally and like they had absolutely no reason no reason to trust me for the reasons that you just and i learned very early on by speaking to them that white people up in their world for one of two reasons, either to help because, they were quote unquote, do gooders. So maybe were teachers or they were nuns or to surveil, to watch, to control Police Social Workers ball in that category, often and others but either way, those folks coming in because it was their job and i was no different i was coming in because it was my job. So what was agenda and in the beginning what really helped was that we had a shared enemy and enemy was in a very broad sense, poverty. I want to write about poverty. I want to show whats happening in this very rich and in a more specific sense, it was this shelter that they were living in that was a scandal. And the public wasnt allowed in. And so i was undercover and so i needed the family to help me. I gave them cameras and asked for their help in documenting the conditions that were dickensian. They were just horrific. All ten family members were living in room in a mice infested roach infested, mold infested room. Dasani spent a quarter of her child hud three and a half years in that shelter, and it was closed to the public. And it was where the people who had stayed in the shelter system, which now has about 70,000 people in new york city, its where they were sent. If theyd overstayed their welcome. So it was intentionally punitive. It was run by an agency with a 1 billion budget. So this agency knew what was happening and chose not to fix it. And so we had the shared kind of enemy in a sense like, lets expose this and i think created a bond early. I could tell you am really good talking. My best game getting in as a journalist. I actually dont think so. I think im quite clumsy and. If anything, i show, maybe thats sort of what they found endearing is like my pen would always fall on the floor or i just seemed like a mess half the time. I think i was just like so like eager and ready to to to follow them and and understand their story and they maybe they sort of took pity on me, like, i just seemed like i really needed to be with them, but, but you can talk to your best game. And at the end of the day, what ends up happening as a journalist is its the stuff that happens outside language that people are they were watching me closely as i was watching them and i think they were seeing, is she okay . Whats she about theres this kind of scoping out period. And my mother is actually with us today. Shes in the front row and shes from south from chile. And i think that that was what actually where it turned was chanel heard me pretty much im almost positive arguing with my mother in spanish and shes like okay shes all right shes not she literally was like youre not all white. Its like youre like about get into a huge fight with your mother in spanish and its really good, you know, and yeah see see yeah we get we can really whats so that i think just seeing in me i was a mom now a single mom at the time i was married but. You know these things are what you know i showed my cards as much as i felt they deserved that. And i do feel that they deserve to benefit from this book. And i we can talk about that, but ive set that up on my website that they will benefit from this book. Now, we can say a lot of times by the book because they benefit, they benefit. And the book by the book. But its absolute be the right thing. Yes, but that point, i will also add, they did not know in the process because. I wanted them to feel fully free to walk away at any point. Not that there was some financial and so that was off the table as a discussion topic. They just thought this is three years in deciding is like your job is just weird like three years later youre still following me around, you know . I dont know that they believe the book would come out after a certain i dont know that my mom believed anyone believe that would come out it took many yeah yeah and lots lots of things happened in those years. Oh yes. So i really could talk to you for 17 hours. But were not allowed. So im going to jump ahead a little bit to talk about just quickly a touch on these systems. Right. Weve mentioned them several times. The sign her family engaged with several systems, the School System, the housing system, as you describe, systems that were to provide help. So you can you talk a bit about that . So notice in that list read, i did not mention the School System because they are actually providing help without appropriate funding. I think teachers are shouldering an extraordinarily insane amount of the burden of this country in terms of their just their they are on the front lines they on the front lines and they have to do so many things before they can even begin to do what they showed up to do, to begin with, which is teach. Right. They these schools have become places of surrogate parents, of medical care, of food around, you know, year round of providers, of clothing. I mean, this was designed a second home. And so that was the one system that thank god it existed. But but it needs more support than it gets these other systems, the one that i think is most. The one that haunts me, the most to this day is the socalled Child Protection system. Its really family surveillance system. And disproportionately impacts families color around. 200,000 children are separated. Their parents every year in this country on charges of neglect is what happened to this family. And thats different from abuse. And this is the thing that i cant get across to people enough neglect is failure to provide. We all know it abuses and nobody that that is you know willingness to harm most of these are neglect cases and neglect is code for poverty. So often its your kid dressed appropriately. They lost their kids because for the mainly for the reason that theyre their was falling apart because of city agencies that didnt take care of things they were supposed to take care what wasnt the familys fault and yet trauma that was inflicted on these kids because of that system is is is national scandal. Yeah i think, i think the way that you you leave through these systems and their experience them is a really its it what some of us who lived it. No. And that those of us who who believe these systems are doing what theyre supposed to do are learning that. They criminalize poverty. Yes, right. They trauma thats lasting for the children and for the families. And meanwhile, in order to survive poverty, you acquire these skills. And then we want people to escape poverty. And a lot of times the things that need to survive poverty kind of prevent you from escaping it. Right right systems are sort of designed in a way to keep you right. You are. Was that some of the experience that you had with watching this family . Definitely. And to your point, i was skeptical myself of this escape from poverty narrative. I didnt want to fall into that trap going i but there is a part of all of us that wants the protagonist of any story in this case, shes a real human being i care about and who was life was following. We want them to win. Right. And so its hard to avoid that kind of theme that hollywood ask wanting for her to be the one that got out, which is, i think you were referring to in your opening remarks. The problem with that is that for every child who makes it out, there are million who are just as capable, just as willing, but for whom the stars did not align. It is so, so much matter of luck, and yet when we celebrate the one who made it out, what were doing is were saying were to the Horatio Alger myth. Were going to the story that we tell ourselves about america, which were seeing increasingly not the reality that you can work as hard as you possibly able and you will not make out, because these are barriers that are greater than any one child can. And so dasani was given an extraordinary opportunity. It happens about a third of the way through the book, she goes to a boarding school that designed to rescue children from poverty in pennsylvania. And she thrives she takes off. But in her absence, her family falls apart. And without telling you what happens, i will say, is dishonest. Doing very well today and. What where she lands on this and this is the Important Message she says it herself is that she doesnt want to have to leave her family. She doesnt to have to leave her community of origin in order to thrive. She would like to thrive in place she would like to achieve the American Dream. Her own neighborhood, with her own culture, with her own language, with her own everything, with the things she adores. And she wants it both ways. And i think that thats where that is my. Takeaway is that the hope is in her and people like you reading this book and thinking in new ways about how tackle the problem that weve all created right and we have contributed to it and perpetuated so i mean i think about you a comment in another interview about, the unseen childhoods of all these other folks as we focus. Desiree, her parents are in book. We talk about joni, her grandmother. I you know, if this intervention existed for joni, that sample of joni goes to her she school how does the song his life look generations later yeah so so it feels complex the systemic issues feel overwhelming they feel unavoidable but theyre actually not. I think it starts with a belief no kid regardless of their situation or their family or where theyre born. They all should have a no. She, Milton Hershey. Absolute opportunity. They are where they live because love to celebrate resilience. We love use that word in relation to children no child should have to be as resilient as disney was forced to be in america. Its its its outrageous that we let fall this far and so i, i do celebrate that. And i would like to share with you something you just alluded to, which was a few months before the family fell apart was broken apart by. The Child Protection services, i was with them and i was watching the step dad supreme, who is a barber, give his son, poppa, a haircut hes very proud of his skills. It was a beautiful look on top that day. And i remember photographing them and then sitting there, this this kind of revelation, me because by then i knew supreme really well he wouldnt talk to me the first year. Wow he would not be tolerated. But he was like, im not talking to you. You youre a white devil. Im not talking to us like, okay fine, but as long as you tolerate me. Eventually, he explained what he meant by that. He explained, the nation of islam, all of his beliefs, the racism hed gone through his whole story, his trauma as a child and i got i came to really, really understand his rage. His every a lot of things about him. And that day i was looking at him and he was leaning over giving pop american pop papa. So cute to get, you know to. Hes got this this smile with this gap in his teeth and these cheeks and hes he was seven years old and. Hes so winning and sympathetic as kid you see poppa and you love him. But what about supreme . If you dont know supreme and you see him this tall black man and youre interviewing him potentially as his future employer, and you see hes got a background, hes done some, hes gotten arrested. Youre not going to necessarily sympathetic to him. And yet what you could see the boy inside him. That was what i, i saw that day. Like the boy that made him the barber, because he had to learn, cut his brothers hair because his his parents were gone and boy who got separated from his parents because his little sister died, the front steps of his projects. And then the boy who literally couldnt talk a year from that trauma of that separation, all of is living inside of him. And so where i think where i come around now is that to about a child like dasani, like poppa is to write about former children. We are all for our children. Its to write about these childhoods that came before them that live inside their parents. And if we start to see adults that way, i, we, we up coming to a more profound understanding of whats needed to rectify these problems, which is to just to help the families. Absolutely. And and we we dont have time where we talk a lot about. 2 minutes. We have 2 minutes. Weve got to weve talked about system. Right. And in a lot of ways we feel because weve demonized adults in these childrens lives that their lives would be better if we just removed the adults then we remove the children. We talk about the trauma of that, but also talk a little bit about what youve learned and saw firsthand when the child removed and placed with the foster family the foster family is provided all the resources, not the family. This is the family. Literally the food stamps had been cut for four months. Supreme was scrambling, was an excellent chef, by the way. Hes very proud of his chef skills. Just getting he could to feed his kids. The gas was cut. This is all because of bureaucratic errors. Nothing to do. He was calling, doing everything he could. They came in. They took these kids out this home and they put them in a in a system that went on to spend 33,000 on average per month on these eight kids. I mean, just right there, you know, weve got a problem. This system that you take only a fraction of those funds and redirect to the family with oversight, i dont know. But there were so many ways to handle that. And they were traumatized as a result in. 2018, with the separation of migrants and their children at the border, there was a fury across america. People were outraged. How we in america stand to separate children from their parents at the border. This has been happening for decades in families, communities of color and. Everyone in this room who knows what im talking about, what im talking about. This is a major rights issue and i cant say enough it. And were going to keep saying it with you. Right. We all know better now. What would you before we turn it over to the audience what would you like the reader to walk away with . I would love the reader to find a dishonest in his or her. Your own communities. Just find someone to be in community with and to have a relationship. I think that thats where it begins. Okay. All right. All so if you dont ask questions, know that i will continue to talk. Ive already got myself off of it. Thank you, andrew. Were going to it over to the audience who has a question. Yes, gentlemen were going to bring a microphone to you. Thanks. What would you say to those who after hearing talk about the the way that you yada, yada, yada, the adults in the back ground, what would you say to those people who would tell who would want know . Sorry. A little bit nervous, right . Would want to know that. Who would who would say to you that kind of took the easy way out on that. Right. By not focusing on you, by not focusing more on the adults. I havent read the books. Im just. Yes, no, youre not focusing more on the adults. What you did with your readers, what is that . You tugged at their heartstrings, but you didnt make them think more deeply about the issue. So what i would say that is absolutely the right question. If you havent read the book, my that that was wrong came early. This is a book about many childhoods it is a deep exploration of the adults so i did not take road it was my initial inclination because i and so this five part series that ran in the New York Times was much focused on disney and it created a huge reaction. But i knew with the book that it that the adults needed to have their place of honor and dignity and. And there are some of supreme in chanel are among most fascinating people. Ive written about they are extraordinary but yes i think that the book a corrective to that next question oh thank you in the back disclosure i havent read the book. Thank you for your efforts as native pennsylvanian. Ive been fascinated by the Milton Hershey school, which must commit a percentage of revenue each year to the education these children huge amount of resources. The she talk about the struggle going to me its almost like going from one extreme to the other. Yes i look this very closely at the time that she went hershey was spending about thousand dollars per this is the richest private school in america up to the 12th grade. It has a more than 17 billion endowment. It was created by chocolate magnate Milton Hershey, who no children. So he left his money to the school. And yes she went from a high poverty neighborhood to a boarding school. You are put in this is all in the book, but in kind of alternate universe of suburban mcmansions, each one run by a married real couple with 12 hershey kids in their charge, they get braces, have swimming lessons, ballet tutoring, all the amenities of a college campus. Its its like this other world. And at first, again, as i said, designing, the first thing she noted noticed was it was quiet. She could sleep through the night. It was just this kind of the impact place was so clear on her when on me when i watched her make that transition, that she just she could calm her body could calm down in a way there that wasnt able to, not just because of the gunshots and things that she surrounded by, but also the stress. Right. The stress of home, the problem that she encounter there was the feeling that she had be white act white, talk white and that meant saying isnt instead of eight to be very specific. So hershey taught her to code switch. You speak one way when youre home, but when you come here, you speak another way. And then you learn to switch between different parts. America and one of the interesting things about code switching is we all do it. I talk one way to a mayor im interviewing and another on the phone to my 11 year old right. We all could switch to a certain language. Okay, maybe this mayor. I dont know. Actually, my my 11 year old thats more mayoral than you imagine. But, you know, dishonest started to feel this real identity. Like, why isnt it okay to say it . I can learn to read and write and do all these other things in a certain way. But why cant. Why isnt it okay . This feeling increasingly that she had to cut off from her culture in order to thrive, to be part of the American Dream . You know, which is a devaluation of her culture. Yeah, i think thats the piece that gets missed when were talking about what it takes to survive or thrive in another world to escape poverty. It is also telling that you have to devalue. These things are so important to you, right . That they carry no value. And i think thats the struggle as well, right . Yeah. And you know, at the end of the day, disney chose she chose herself. I wont say what that means, but she chose her. You have to buy the book. I, i think we have time for maybe two more questions. Yes, maam. Maybe tupac questions. Thank you so much for your presentation and a couple months, ill be 85. And i am saying that because i have lived a lot heard a lot, heard a lot of repetition. Fortunately my family was i, guess you would say, an intact family. My mom and dad and we were six children. And during that time, not just my parents but the entire neighborhood it was family. I grew up with a knowledge that regardless of how i went or how much education i received, i was still category ized that has never left me. I have lived long enough to know and i have met parents that are in the situations that dasani grew up in. They love their children. Yes, they do the very best that they can for their children. But they have so much weight on them. America forgets that children grow up to be adults. Yes, yes. And part of the problem is with this country, we look sometimes on one side of the coin and not the other. We have just this much other ethnic group in this country now that are experiencing just what you are saying. And of them are totally ignored. So a lot of this where we want to make judgment calls on individuals, we really need to stop and think i recently finished reading the other west more story the of our governor if you have not it you might to read it so much of what you are saying now is said a little differently but its the same and as heartbreak for me to know that this country supposed to lead the greatest country in the world. There is no reason that any child, regardless of what ethnic Group Experiences like this torture because. Thats exactly what it is you to you label child you put bury is for a child and then you expect the child to grow up to be a wonderful adult thats ludicrous for a better word to put it. Yes, but i thank you because. Its your spend on. I could say same thing, right. The same book. Get one reception and youd get so i appreciate the fact that you took the time to do what you did. Maybe it doesnt seem a lot to many people, but to me its Meghan Jefferson and i thank you for it. Oh, thank you so much. I actually i think were out of time. Im so sorry. Were out of time so i can answer other parkinson. Last word. How would you like to us with actually. I believe that those were the best words i want to i want to salute you. I want to you i want to thank you for that. And im to talk to anyone over in the food, whatever. Not food, but book said, whatever it is. Where are we going . Were going to be at the spencer come and ill talk to you more. Talk her in line while you buy your book and, then get your book signed. Right. Thank you. Than now i have the honor introducing jonathan. I