![\"\"](\"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-content\/uploads\/CONFETTI_revised_poster.jpg1_-300x173.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In a scene from the film \u201cConfetti,\u201d Lan stood bewildered as she watched her daughter, Meimei, spell out the words \u201cking\u201d and \u201ctree\u201d in chalk.<\/span><\/p>\n After a year in a private special education school, her dyslexic child could only spell two words. This wasn\u2019t enough for Lan who is dyslexic herself, she wanted Meimei to be normal.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s going to be waste, like me,\u201d said Lan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On Tuesday the Asian American Studies Program and Center hosted a screening and panel discussion for \u201cConfe<\/span>tti,\u201d <\/span>a film based on the<\/span> life of Ann Hu<\/span><\/a> who wrote and directed it in hopes to raise awareness towards children with learning disabilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt’s an immigrant story. It\u2019s a mother and daughter story, and it’s about learning, dyslexia and education,\u201d said Hu during the panel discussion. \u201cIt is about all those things but for me, it’s about humanity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Chris M. Kwok, an <\/span>Asian American studies adjunct faculty at Hunter College, said the film fit a category of Asian American films that have broken into mainstream media in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cConfetti\u201d not only contributes to the representation of Asians but highlights the under-diagnosis of learning disabilities amongst Asian Americans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While <\/span>1.4 million<\/span><\/a> Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders identify with being disabled according to the U.S. Census Bureau, only <\/span>7%<\/span><\/a> of Asian American children are served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The model minority myth and the stigma towards disabilities amongst Asian communities also prevent families from seeking aid.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cParticularly in Asian families if children have issues or are not succeeding academically, and I would say this as a generalization, often they think it’s not anybody else’s fault except the kids or their own and you just gotta push them,\u201d said Kwok. \u201cAnd if you push them they’re gonna succeed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Nelson Mar, a panelist and the co-chair of the New York State Bar Association\u2019s Education Committee, said that it\u2019s not just Asian families that have difficulties in navigating learning disabilities but immigrant families in general due to struggles like cultural adjustments and financial burdens. The language barrier struggle was showcased in the film when a Mandarin-speaking student had to step in to translate information between a principal and Lan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat is arguably one of the worst things you can do to put a family through,\u201d said Mar. \u201cTo have another child translate, let alone your child translate, for you on such important matters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In 2019, the New York City Department of Education was hit with a <\/span>civil rights lawsuit <\/span><\/a>for a translation pilot program to be launched for special needs schools.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On January 26, the Chancellor of Education David C. Banks said New York City officials are planning to open a <\/span>new school<\/span><\/a> to serve students with dyslexia. The City University of New York also offers the Linking Employment, Academics and Disability Services which helps graduates with disabilities find jobs. Almost <\/span>70%<\/span><\/a> of all participants received employment since the program\u2019s launch in 2010.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At the end of the film, Lan accepts the fact that Meimei will never be like other children as the camera zooms out from them holding each other.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hu recalls how a child told her that \u201cnow I know I\u2019m okay now, I know what I am\u201d after the film, and said her goal is to get a message across and push it as far away as possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Every single person counts, every little bit counts, a screening like this really, it counts a lot,\u201d said Hu.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Language and cultural barriers create stigmas for treating dyslexia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":4178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4177"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}