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

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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragic true story written by Anne Fadiman, who spent over five years in the middle of a fight between Hmong culture and American medicine. The book is about a young Hmong child named Lia Lee. At 3 months old she started showing signs of severe epilepsy. Her American doctors had a strict and rigorous treatment plan, but were baffled when the family refused to follow it because of their culture and beliefs. Anne Fadiman originally went to the Lee’s hometown of Merced California as a columnist writing an article on Hmong culture for Life Magazine, but soon gained a personal connection to the Lee family. She does a wonderful job of showing both the Hmong and American side of the story by providing …show more content…

Many of the Hmong (including the Lee family) immigrated from their Thai refugee camp to America in the late seventies. The book is mainly about the Hmong culture and healing beliefs colliding with “modern” American medicine. The Lees want to heal Lia spiritually with a Txiv neeb (spiritual healer), and don’t really want to use and medicine provided by their doctors. At the beginning of the book Fadiman explains why the Hmong prefer a Txiv neeb over a doctor. She writes, “Txiv neebs were polite and never needed to ask questions; doctors asked many rude and intimate questions... Txiv neebs never undressed their patients; doctors ask patients to take off all their clothes... Txiv neeb knew that to treat the body without treating the soul was an act of patent folly; doctors never even mentioned the soul” (Fadiman …show more content…

The book goes into detail on how the Hmong felt like fishes out of water. An example of this is when Fadiman describes the idea of role lost. In Laos the role system used to go Grandfather is the most important and is obeyed by father, who is obeyed by his wife, who is obeyed by her children, and younger children obey their older siblings. But Fadiman described what happens to a lot of Hmong families when they come to America, “Grandfather has no job. Father can only chop vegetables. Mother didn’t work in the old country, but here she gets a job in a garment factory. Oldest daughter works there too. Son drops out of high school because he can’t learn English. Youngest daughter learns best English in the family and ends up at U.C. Berkley” (Fadiman 206). Now the roles and power are almost exactly the opposite, with grandfather being on the very

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

1416 Words | 6 Pages

In her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman describes the story of the Lee family and the conflicting views that arose between Western and Eastern beliefs on providing Lia medical aid. When Laos fell to the communists, the Lees were among the thousands of Hmong who fled the country. They arrived in the U.S. with their seven children and settled in the town Merced. When the Lee’s fourteenth child, Lia, was three months, her older sister slammed the front door of the apartment and Lia fainted. Her parents Nao Kao and Foua Lee believed that the noise frightened Lia’s soul to flee from her body and became lost which they associated with qaug dab peg: “the spirit catches you and you fall down”.

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The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Book Report

229 Words | 1 Pages

“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anna Fadiman tells the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong child with epilepsy, whose life could have been different if only her family was caught up in western medicine. This book reveals the tragic struggles between a doctor and patient because of lack of communication. When Lia was around three months old, her older sister Yer accidentally slammed a door and Lia had suddenly fallen into the floor. This is the first recorded time that Lia was experiencing an epileptic shock.

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Summary Of A Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Anne Fadiman

162 Words | 1 Pages

In Anne Fadiman’s, A Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there’s a conflicting battle going on between cultures. While it might never be specifically stated, Anne Fadiman attempts to convey a neutral understanding to her readers of the Hmong beliefs and culture alongside of the culture of biomedicine western society is mostly familiar with. While the Hmong beliefs and practices in medicine are taboo to western society, readers gradually see that Hmong medicine is just as equal or more powerful than biomedicine that we’re so familiar with. It’s an important concept to understand in this book is that the doctors are there to treat Lia’s disease, not precisely concerned with Lia as a person. Hmong medicine seems to be more related to in helping

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

540 Words | 3 Pages

This blatant disregard to the Hmong’s perception of lab work shows that their distrust in doctors is well placed. Had the situation been explained, as with the baby’s family (51) they may have been more willing to accept treatment. The Hmong people have little to no knowledge to how western base medicine works, thus can only speculate on how it works from what they observe. The language barrier adds another level of confusion, for even if time was taken to explain procedures, there is still the lack of producing an adequate, understandable and accurate translation. In this passage, the lack of information causes the Hmong people to conjure up explanations for what the American doctors practice, obvious from the title, “Do Doctors Eat Brains?”.

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

905 Words | 4 Pages

The Hmong became frustrated with the American medicine as seen when the author says that it was typically Hmong for patients to appear passively obedient only to later ignore everything they had supposedly assented to after they left the hospital. It therefore stressed the doctors who considered the Hmong as the most difficult patients. This was well brought out by a doctor who said that the only easy way to treat the Hmong people was with a bullet in their head known as “high velocity transcortical lead therapy” (63). Lia was equally difficult to the point that nurses would pray she is not admitted any time she fell epileptic. The uncooperative nature of the Lees made Lia be taken away from them

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1302 Words | 6 Pages

The Lee’s were horrified with the side effects of the medications that disrupted her character. Thus leading to the doctors thinking the Lee’s were non-compliant with her medical regime. This, however, was clearly not the issue as the Hmong cherished and loved their children so deeply. They only had diverse beliefs and

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842 Words | 4 Pages

During the Vietnam War several Hmong’s relocated to America as political refugees. There was an enormous culture shock from both the Hmong and Americans and misunderstandings due to language barrier. Struggling to adapt to a new society with different norms the Hmong were highly underestimated. The author’s encounter with the Hmong patients were very heart felt, she grew especially close to the Lee family whose daughter had been diagnosed with a disease with radically different meanings for Western physicians. The Hmong had viewed epilepsy as state of being not necessarily psychological defect or even series of events.

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1617 Words | 7 Pages

In Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, two cultures clash with each other in the struggle to save Lia Lee, a Hmong child refugee with severe epilepsy. Although Lee and her family live in the United States, and thus receive medical care from Westerners, her family believes that Lee’s condition is sacred and special. The following miscommunications, both culturally and lingually, between the American doctors and the Lee family leave Lia Lee in comatose at the end of the book. However, Lia Lee could have been saved if the Lee’s had a better understanding of the American doctors’ intentions, and the American doctors understood the Hmong culture. Essentially, the tragedy of Lia Lee can be attributed to the clash of American and Hmong cultures at both the surface and sub-surface level.

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857 Words | 4 Pages

In most of the novel, Fadiman alternates between the specific story of Lia and her family and the general history of the Hmong. She begins at the very beginning of Lia’s story and she tries her best to date the Hmong as far back in history as possible. In comparison, both elements of the story have three main elements: suffering, struggle, and survival. In particular, intense moments of both mental and physical suffering are observed in these parallel stories. Lia clearly endures physical suffering from her violent seizures and the Hmong who had to flee their home country had to walk for miles at a time in large packs.

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