Invisible Child

Review This is non-fiction writing at its best - uncluttered, evocative and well-researched... This is not a polemic. Elliott bears witness but does not preach; she shows but rarely tells. She does not pretend to be a neutral bystander (how could you immerse yourself in a struggling family for eight years and not root for them?) but does not intrude on her own storytelling. It is not a morality play either. The villains are too elusive and the heroes too flawed for that. This is structural, generational poverty at work in all its gruesome, demeaning inhumanity and punitive, institutional brutality. -- Gary Younge - New Statesmen A gripping and propulsive work of narrative non-fiction . . . [an] indelible, virtuosic portrait of contemporary America - Financial Times A triumph of in-depth reporting and storytelling ...a visceral blow-by-blow depiction of what 'structural racism' has meant in the lives of generations of one family ... above all else it is a celebration of a little girl-an unforgettable heroine whose frustration, elation, exhaustion, and intelligence will haunt your heart. -- Ariel Levy Invisible Child is hands down the best book I have read in years. Astonishing, remarkable, shocking, powerful, gripping, compelling. All of these words apply and more. This is a book of immense importance, written with tremendous craft and skill, but also compassion and verve . . . For those who have not read Invisible Child I am jealous, you are in for an extraordinary ride. Simply put, this is a masterpiece. - Thomas Harding, bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake A towering feat of reporting that paints, layer by layer, an extraordinary portrait of a child, a family, a city, and the nation that produced them. From start to finish, she sustains an insatiably curious and deeply empathetic focus on worlds that so many people work hard, if mostly unconsciously, to never really see. - Howard W. French, author of Born in Blackness About the Author Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award, a Scripps Howard Award and prizes from the Overseas Press Club and the American Society of News Editors. She has served as an Emerson fellow at New America, a visiting journalist at the Russell Sage Foundation and a visiting scholar at the Columbia Population Research Center, and is the recipient of a Whiting Foundation grant. In 2015, she received Columbia University's Medal for Excellence, given to one alumnus or alumna under the age of forty-five. She lives in New York City. Invisible Child is her first book, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction.