YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrea Elliott

lines on the record: 60
first: 2022-02-11
most recent: 2022-02-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Struggled with it for a long time. And in the early days, and I wrote this book over the course of those years and then rewrote, I don't consider myself a writer. I say I'm a rewriter. I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until it starts to feel like it's hitting the right notes. I read my stuff aloud and I read it to Dasani and to Aviana and to others as I was going and sometimes they would say, I don't know, maybe it's more like it was this, and I relied very heavily on video and audio. A lot of tech, which is ironic given I'm a complete Luddite myself, but I don't rely on memory. And so a lot of it was, you know, more than 100 hours of video recordings and dozens of hours of audio recordings to ensure that it was accurate. But at the same time, what I wanted, and I think this is where”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone is watching. Mind your own damn business, Dasani manages to shout from her sister's impossible clutch. She cannot breathe like this. No one hugs like this. You're holding me too tight. Let me go. Let me go. No one lets go. They stand like this for minutes. They already know their next move. The A train will come, taking them to downtown Brooklyn. The train is coming, the very train that their grandmother used to clean. It pulls into the station, the doors open.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both trains arrive and the sisters dismount. They cannot find each other. Aviana writes that she is here. Dasani writes that she's coming upstairs. Aviana writes that she's coming down. No, Dasani writes that she's coming up. Where are you at? Dasani asks. Ivana is at the turnstile. Come to the escalators, writes Dasani. The thread stops. The station stops. Two sisters are crashing into each other. Have no words, they hold each other like refugees who have crossed an unseen border.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A feverish correspondence follows they agree to meet the following weekend at a subway station in Queens. They are both nervous. Aviana sends detailed instructions. Dasani must take the A train to Broadway Junction, then the J train to Queens to the last stop, get off, go upstairs, and then meet me at the turnstile. Queens is not Dasani's turf. She asks for the name of the station which worries Aviana. Nothing can be left to chance. Instead, they settle on Broadway Junction, which is impossible to miss. Got you, sis, Aviana writes, In the afternoon of december tenth, Aviana leaves her foster home in Queens and Isani leaves her foster home in Staten Island. They check their phones. I'm on the train, writes Aviana. Me too, writes Dasani. By one twenty eight PM, they are minutes apart.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now sixteen knows that her estranged sister Aviana will be rankled by this. To write forever family is Dasani's way of saying the opposite, that nothing is forever, not even family, that one's sister can be replaced as easily as one's own blood, which is not thicker than water, as their mother used to say. In the photograph, Dasani wears a red bandana and allegiance to the bloods. That's a gang. One family is poised to take the place of another. Dasani is not seeing Aviana in over a year. They last exchanged texts five months ago. But Dasani knows how to break her sister's silence. Precisely two hours and 35 minutes after Dasani posts the forever family photo. Aviana appears on Facebook, clicking a digital hand. The hand waves at her sister. Dasani waves back. Hey, sis, writes fifteen year old Aviana.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They did. They thought of themselves as twins and they did not consider themselves as separate individuals as far as I could tell until child protection services intervened and separated all the children from their parents because the parents were being accused of providing inadequate housing to the children. It wasn't that they were abusing them. And these kids were placed in a foster care system that did give them housing but did not give them the thing they always had at home, which was love. Two years after that, so five years after this photograph was taken, practically their bond, which was always so deep, is on the verge of being broken. And this is the scene. Dasani's in a foster home in Staten Island, a different part of New York, forever family, writes Dasani on December 3rd, 2017, above a photograph on Facebook showing three new friends. They are throwing gang signs.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The photo sheet is 11, and her sister behind her, Aviana, is Tan. And they consider themselves quote unquote full-blood sisters. They had, they shared the same pillow, the same mattress, the same dresser drawer. They had secret handshakes. It was that unspoken language of siblings that they had.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, I'm going to read you a passage that comes about three quarters of the way through. This is a book that follows Dasani as she grows up. So I was in her life for eight years with her family and saw a lot of ups and downs. She came of age in that time. And one of the most difficult things about being deeply poor in New York City is that you have to survive all these government systems that can be generous and can also be very punishing. And so I'm going to show you a quick photograph. This is Dasani and her closest sister of the seven siblings, Aviana, in the background. They were both named for bottled water, Aviana Dasani. They were born 11 months apart and they were just like twins. This was taken in 2012 when I began.”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Insecurity, hunger is the more blunt way to put it. Mice running around her room, constant parenting burdens placed upon her because her parents were overwhelmed. It just was stunning to me that she could kind of balance those two things. I don't even think it was about balancing, it's that those two facts were just a part. They coexisted inside of her and they were a part of who she was, that she wanted more, she wanted to transcend. And yet this was her life and she was showing up for it. And it was in a pity that was so wealthy, right?”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. So I met Dasani standing outside of a homeless shelter. I was there as a reporter for the New York Times in October of 2012. And she walked out of the shelter with her siblings and her mother. And she just immediately struck me as a kind of electrifying presence. She had a lot to say. She was rambunctuous. She was just a very spirited child. She was kind of just exudes at that time popping with enthusiasm and promise. She was on the honorable. She was the fastest sprinter on the block. She had big dreams and a big agenda, it seemed. And what wasn't immediately apparent in just engaging with her was how hard her actual life was. And it was the contrast of those two things, of her huge aspirations for herself and the reality of being crammed in one room with nine family members, often struggling with”
2022-02-11 · Intelligence Squared · Survival and Hope in New York City, with Andrea Elliott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT