Structure

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope is divided into seven unequal parts. The first section relates the dire straits in which the family has found themselves in 2012--ten people to one room at the Auburn Family Residence, the homeless shelter in Brooklyn. Dasani is eleven years old in the first scenes but she acts like someone much older who is used to taking care of sniffling babies and wandering siblings. Part 1 focuses on how Dasani manages to start junior high school and care for her siblings. Part 2 reaches far back into the history of Dasani's family to explain all the challenges that the Sykes family (Chanel's family) has endured, amongst them Jim Crow laws and neighborhood redlining. This section explains how Joanie (Dasani's grandmother) came to be the tired older woman cleaning the A train on 207th Street. Part 3 shifts to the burgeoning romantic relationship of Chanel...