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

Chanel tries to stay clean. She meets Supreme, 26 and a widower with two children—Khaliq and Nana. Their lives are parallel. They grew up in the same neighborhood, and they are both raising two children as single parents. Both had parents with substance abuse disorders, and Supreme was placed in foster care after his parents became addicted to heroin. Eventually he moved to Washington, DC, with his wife, where one day she unexpectedly fell down a flight of stairs and died while pregnant with their third child. Supreme moved back to New York.

Khaliq, Supreme’s oldest child, does not talk much; as a baby he was trapped with his mother’s lifeless body for an unknown length of time. Chanel sees Supreme as a “broken man” who needs her, while Supreme sees Chanel as a “lost soul” who “had been fed all the wrong influences” (159-60). Supreme feels that the American Dream is a false promise built to disempower Black people.

Supreme introduces Chanel to the Five-Percent Nation, a Black nationalist movement founded in 1964 by former Nation of Islam member Clarence 13X. Because of his beliefs, Supreme dropped his birth name “Eric” to become “Godsupreme.