Depicting the Asian American community as the model-minority ignores the issue of poverty that persists within this ethnicity. In fact, “between 2007 and 2011, the number of Asian Americans living in poverty [in California] increased by roughly 50 percent, to over half a million. Hmong and Cambodian American children have higher rates of poverty (42 percent and 31 percent, respectively) than African American and Latino children (27 percent and 26 percent, respectively)”. Unfortunately, this trend extends out of California because “in recent years, Asian Americans in New York City plunged deeper into poverty and are now the poorest New Yorkers” (Lee 378). Although there is a higher percentage of the Asian American community who lives in poverty,