Book Report On The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Anne Fadiman

The Lee Family The book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman, is a story of a Hmong child and her family who collide poorly with American culture and medicine. Lia Lee was their last child out of thirteen brothers and sisters. Lia, whose family is from a very cultural land, was diagnosed with epilepsy after her family fled to America. This led to numerous cultural collisions, miscommunication issues along with medical incompetence, and her parents’ custody battle with the American government. They came to America for safety and security, where they were left unfairly treated. Foua Lang, mother, and Nao Kao, father, were struggling in a new country and were not given the help and support necessary for their family situation. The Lee family of the Hmong culture in

Her condition was called qaug dab peg, which in Hmong tradition meant that it was derived from a spiritual origin in which she was separated from her soul. The family came from a completely different world of medicine, they valued people at not a higher level but at a more intellectual level. Hmong people believe more in traditional healers, a formal healer who has earned the respect and proven themselves to their community. Although western medicine practitioners are formal healers, they are not what the Hmong people have relied on. Other cultures who value similar forms of traditional healing are highly ethnocentric. These smaller cultural communities value the world and the earth. They not only see but feel the influences of every surrounding thing. Evidence shows that within these communities, people feel safer and in control of how they choose to approach healing. Having the personal connection with a healer or a healer feels much more safe and inviting. Western medicine is entirely different. The values are similar, but biomedical methods tend to supposedly prove the traditional methods as useless and