Genre
Nonfiction / Biography
Setting and Context
Set in Brooklyn in the 2010s
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narration by Andrea Elliott
Tone and Mood
Inspiring, Heartbreaking, Honest
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Dasani Coates and the antagonist is systemic racism, homelessness, and poverty.
Major Conflict
The author and journalist follow the protagonist for ten years from the age of eleven to chart the issue of poverty in America. It highlights the social issues that generation after generation of black people faces in a system that places them at a disadvantage.
Climax
The climax is not apparent.
Foreshadowing
The systemic racism that restricts the lives of the family from different generations foreshadows the cycle of poverty that continues in Dasani’s life.
Understatement
"While other people want the glamorous life of Jay-Z, Chanel would settle for being his pet. “Just let me be the dog…I don’t care where you put me.”
Allusions
Dasani’s story alludes to the consequences of systemic racism that hinders the social and economic progress of minority groups in America.
Imagery
“Dasani feels her way across the room that she calls “the house”—a 520-square-foot space containing her family and all their possessions. Toothbrushes, love letters, a dictionary, bicycles, an Xbox, birth certificates, Skippy peanut butter, underwear. Hidden in a box is Dasani’s pet turtle, kept alive with bits of baloney and the occasional Dorito. Taped to the wall is the children’s proudest art: a bright sun etched in marker, a field of flowers, a winding path. Every inch of the room is claimed.”
Paradox
The support systems created to ensure the wellbeing of children living under the poverty line have become routine visits only to check for abuse rather than direct support through counsel or funding.
Parallelism
“Dasani and Chanel have no reason to trust me. Eventually, Chanel will confess that if I weren’t a mother, she would never have let me near her children. It also helps that I am not, in her words, “all white” because I am “Latin.” My ethnicity delights Dasani, whose biological father is half Dominican. But to Chanel, race matters more. I am, at best, a white Latina with a graduate degree, making me the beneficiary of a privilege that she will observe and dissect for years to come.”
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“She wears a Bluetooth like a permanent earring and tends toward power suits.”
Personification
“A chilly November wind whips across Auburn Place, rustling the plastic cover of a soiled mattress in a trash bin.”
