Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

Miss Hester stands up in class and takes a risk. “I was different, and I don’t regret it.” She rarely talks about her childhood. She prefers to think about the future. But her students are growing up in the kind of place that she escaped, and she wants them to hear her story. “I knew I didn’t want to stay there,” she continues. “And I wasn’t making any sacrifices to stay. I was making sacrifices to leave. To exit, okay?” The classroom falls to a hush. For Dasani, it is strange to hear a teacher talking about Bed-Stuy. “The Stuy” is where her mother came of age, where her grandmother came to rest, and where Dasani still goes to ACS appointments—in the very building where Supreme had been separated, at age nine, from his siblings. Teachers are supposed to be from some other place. It was like hearing that the crossing guard had gone to prom with Dasani’s mother. Miss Hester grew up in the Stuy.