The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, And The Collision Of Two Cultures By Anne Fadiman
Published in 1997, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures is a remarkable masterpiece that feels just as significant today, more than 20 years after being published, for its commentary on cultural differences, social construction of illness, and most important of all, empathy. I didn't know anything about Hmong culture and now I do. Highly recommended for anyone who wants an engaging and thought-provoking read. I'm looking forward to my F2F book club's discussion on this book. Description:||ix, 355 pages; 21 cm |. What might be learned from this? The doctors' tense, dramatic narration as they describe Lia's catastrophic seizure indicates the case still affects them years later. Was foster care ultimately to Lia's benefit or detriment? Given this discordance in the fundamentals of each culture's worldview, the question that begs to be answered is: could things have gone differently? In this case, though, we mostly ended up in total divergence. There the lack of a common language or trained interpreters, and the clash of cultures led to disastrous results. I was especially interested in this book because I traveled to Laos a couple of years ago, and had the opportunity to visit a Hmong village in the mountains above Luang Prabang. An intriguing, spirit-lifting, extraordinary exploration of two cultures in uneasy coexistence.... A wonderful aspect of Fadiman's book is her evenhanded, detailed presentation of these disparate cultures and divergent views—not with cool, dispassionate fairness but rather with a warm, involved interest.... Fadiman's book is superb, informal cultural anthropology—eye-opening, readable, utterly engaging. Chapter 11 the spirit catches you and you fall down essay. The book is so beautifully and compassionately written - you feel for absolutely everyone in the story.
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She has won National Magazine Awards for both Reporting (1987) and Essays (2003), as well as a National Book Critics Circle Award for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The Hmong are a clan without a country, most recently living in China and then Laos. Chapter 11 the spirit catches you and you fall down audio. Lia's treatment was complex—her anti-convulsant prescriptions changed 23 times in four years—and the Lees were sure the medicines were bad for their daughter. Neil decides to transport Lia to Valley Children's Hospital (VCH) in the nearby city of Fresno, California, where, Neil believes, the doctors will have better resources. In doing so, I found that it's on a lot of different curriculums.
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To this day we don't know why). The book expands outward from there, exploring the history and culture of the Hmong, their enlistment in the U. Lia's treatment plan was simplified and made more palatable to the Lee's wishes.
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Because of course the USA could not be seen to be fighting directly, that would be a violation of something or another. And Lia was caught in the middle. If we do, how can we work effectively with someone different from ourselves? Hmong Americans -- Medicine. In the end, there was no simple solution to their plight, but more mutual respect and understanding of the differences between the cultures would have benefitted everyone involved. Perhaps Fadiman believed that the reader needed considerable repetition to get the message (and she may be right about that), but I really didn't' need to be told – again – that the Lees believed a spirit was the cause of Lia's problems, or that they believe the medicine made her worse, or that the doctors thought the Lees were difficult or poor parents. Stream Chapter 11 - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down from melloky | Listen online for free on. In the 1960's, the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency recruited the Laotian Hmong, known as skilled and brutal fighters, to serve in their war against the communists.
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Fadiman was a founding editor of the Library of Congress magazine Civilization, and was the editor of the Phi Beta Kappa quarterly The American Scholar. Anne Fadiman is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reporting, she has written for Civilization, Harper's, Life, and the New York Times, among other publications. It is hypocritical of Westerners to vilify the Hmong and other cultures for eating dogs when they eat pigs, which are even more intelligent than dogs. This is an eye-opening account of multiculturalism, social services, and the medical community. Fadiman uses detailed visual imagery to transport us to the hospital, where we can feel the stress and confusion of those present. It is the story of Lia Lee, a young Hmong girl whose family had immigrated to the United States after the Vietnam War. She insisted rats are dirty and shouldn't be eaten. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis. The daughter of Hmong refugees, Lia begins suffering epileptic seizures as an infant, but her treatment goes wrong as her parents and the American doctors are unable to understand and respect one another. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. OK, let me step off of my soapbox...... In one of the most open-minded works of nonfiction I have ever read, Anne Fadiman analyzes both perspectives—Lia's family and the community of Hmongs on one side and the Merced doctors and nurses on the other.
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She presents arguments from many different viewpoints, and all of them sympathetically; she isn't afraid of facts that run counter to her arguments, nor does she dismiss opposing opinions out of hand. Three of their thirteen children had died from starvation and poor conditions during their flight, and the Lees arrived penniless and illiterate, determined not to be changed by their strange new surroundings. And yet, it very well might have been that same medicine that was responsible for leaving her brain dead at the age of four. But that's not really the point of Fadiman's book: she doesn't condemn anyone, and, in fact, she points out that there isn't anyone person or group who can be blamed for what happened to Lia. The Vietnamese would kill them for minor offences such as stealing food, and they took away the majority of what they harvested. Still hoping to reunite her soul with her body, they arranged for a Hmong shaman to perform a healing ceremony featuring the sacrifice of a live pig in their apartment. The first of the Lees to be born in the United States (and in a hospital), Lia was a healthy baby until she suffered her first seizure at three months of age. No attempt was made to understand how the family saw the disease or what efforts they were making on their own to address the situation. Hospital staff tried to explain what was happening, but despite the presence of interpreters, the Lees remained confused. Some of these challenges: * Who should be grateful to whom? Chapter 11 the spirit catches you and you fall down chapters. She also suffered septic shock, fell into a coma, and became effectively brain dead. It is an unfortunate parallel to Lia's story; in both cases, those in power failed to save the Hmong entrusted to their care. Sherwin B. Nuland - New Republic. It was shocking to look at the bar graphs comparing the Hmong with the Vietnamese, the Cambodians and the Lao…and see how the Hmong stacked up: most depressed.
With the help of their English-speaking nephew, Neil tried to communicate what was happening to Foua and Nao Kao. During the following few months, Lia suffered nearly twenty more seizures, was admitted to the hospital seventeen times between the ages of eight months and four-and-a-half years, and made more than one hundred outpatient visits to the emergency room or pediatric clinic. Why do you think the doctors felt such great stress? Note on Hmong Orthography, Pronunciation, and Quotations. The only difference is what one grows up with as 'normal'.