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

by Andrea Elliott

By the time Miss Hester was sixteen, she had performed well enough to apply to college, winning a scholarship to SUNY Cortland. If Miss Hester had been a boy, this would have landed as good news. Her brothers were the proof. One would become a lawyer and another a psychologist. But girls, according to her mother, did not leave home for college. They “married their way out” of the projects. Stubbornly, Miss Hester packed a large orange suitcase. When her mother refused to take her to the bus station, she left alone, dragging her suitcase along Park Avenue. She would clean houses to support herself in college, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English followed by two master’s degrees from Touro College in 2004. Back in the projects, people sneered that Miss Hester was trying to “be white.” None of it mattered, she says. She can hold her own anywhere she goes. Her diction has range. She switches back and forth, from “ain’t” to “isn’t,” ignoring anyone who considers this a betrayal. “It takes a lot of courage to be different,” she now tells her students at McKinney. Dasani is listening carefully. “Sometimes you have to be alone,” says Miss Hester, looking around the classroom. “I don’t regret it for one second,” she says, slamming her hand on a desk. “That was the path!” The class is motionless. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” says Miss Hester, her voice trembling. “There are going to be some places in your life where you feel bizarre. You feel outstanding. And rema...