Cultural Conflict Between Hmong And America By Anne Fadiman

The United States is the richest country in the world, and with that, we also have the best healthcare system. All over the country, American doctors are working hard in order to find new cure for diseases, as well as discovering new way to make treatments more effective. Trillions of dollars are spent every year in the United States in healthcare, leading to many new advancements in the medical field. Furthermore, our healthcare system continues to improves more and more everyday. For example, in the 1900s, life expectancy for an average person was just shy of fifty years, and now are over eighty years in 2012. Due to the new higher standards of clinical education and technologies, American doctor's potentials are limitless. Also,

The reason that the author, Anne Fadiman, didn’t just focused mainly on Lia’s story because the bigger picture of the cultural conflict, between the Hmong and the American, are just as important. Fadiman gave us an extreme examples of how culturally different the Hmong people are, by comparing the birth of a child in Lao to birth in the American. In America, the most ideal place to give birth is in a hospital with the assistance of a doctors and nurses, however this is a totally new concept for the Hmong people, who recently migrated to the United States. In Laos, mothers like Foua, Lia’s mom, give birth to their children usually by themself. Fadiman mentioned, as foua usually squats for her child birth, “she labored in silence, with the exception of an occasional prayer to her ancestor” this demonstrated one aspect of the Hmong’s culture which is considered normal to them, but strictly taboo for us.(Fadiman 3). By laboring in silence and seduced in prayers, this indicated that the Hmong are every spiritual in their understanding of life. However, compare to the American, we are leaning more toward the clinical perspective of how we should give birth or have medical treatments. Birth is just the beginning of the cultural differences between the Hmong and the

Sacrificial is an significant concept in the Hmong culture, animals sacrificial are believed by the Hmong to cure illness, by trading the soul of the slaughtered animal for the patient’ fugitive soul.(106). The Lees sacrifices many animals throughout the story hoping to cure Lia’s epilepsy, however it did not work. But from an uninformed observer point of view the Lees are seem to be viewed as savagers. Neil Ernst, a doctor overseeing the Lees, spoke his mind “I felt it was important for these Hmong to understand that there were certain elements of medicine that we understood better than they did and that there were certain rules they had to follow with their kid’s live”(79). From a superior point of view, Neil thought that the Hmong’s method of treatment for Lia was extremely subordinate compare to his. Neil’s arrogant made it difficult for him and the Lees to find common grounds, if he would’ve open up to the Lees and be less jurisdiction, acceptance and agreement between the two groups would have