Review Of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Anne Fadiman

In her brilliant and award-winning book, The Spirit Catches You & You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman skillfully demonstrates the cultural clash between a small county hospital in California, and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with sever epilepsy. Both Lia’s parents, as well as the doctors present, wanted what was best for her. However, the lack of understanding between them led to a tragedy. Fadiman did an outstanding job at demonstrating that cultural understanding is essential but lacking in the modern biomedical system. She successfully illustrated the way hospital bureaucracy often detracts from the desired end results of helping patients get well according to their definitions as well. Treatments

She presents her insights of the Hmong culture and their reaction and understanding of epilepsy, which greatly differs from the standpoint of modern biomedicine. Her book truly is a bittersweet account that demonstrates how the seemingly perfect model of western medicine sometimes fails at caring for those who encompass significantly different cultural medical convictions. A vital aspect to understand about Lia and her family is that they were Hmong. Fadiman skillfully interlaced Lia’s story with the history of the Hmong. A great deal of emphasis was directed to whom the Hmong were. They are an ethnic group from China and Laos. They were displaced as a consequence to the disastrous conflict in Southeast Asia that paralleled the Vietnamese War. They are a shamanistic society that believed in evil spirits, called dabs, which inhabit this world, causing mischief and

Lia's illness put her between two extremes: the rationalism of "the culture of biomedicine" (p. 261) and the profound spiritualism that floods every aspect of the Hmong culture. Even without the language barrier, there is very little ground of understanding between these two cultures. Each side is "unfathomable" to the other. The doctors cannot understand why Lia's parents would refuse to cooperate, and the Lees are baffled by almost everything about the doctors. Lia's case can only confirm "the Hmong community's worst prejudices about the medical profession and the medical community's worst prejudices about the Hmong" (p.253). Neither was able to acknowledge the reality of the other, and neither can recognize its own blind