The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Analysis

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a story about Anne Fadiman’s anthropological research on a Hmong family. The particular family she studies is the Lees, who traveled from Laos and settled in Merced, CA. The family was immediately in ultimate culture shock in their new surroundings. The mother, who had delivered all of her babies alone, had her first experience delivering a baby in a hospital. During her stay the language barrier kept her from understanding her doctors but she was pleased when they brought her daughter, Lia Lee, to her. At only three months old, Lia became having what Western Medicine calls epilepsy. However, her family diagnosed her with quag dab peg which translates as “the sprit catches you and you fall down.” This became a huge cross-cultural misunderstanding. The US medical doctors could not open their eyes to the Hmong culture and the Lees could not understand their Western Medicine. The Hmong believed that when Lia’s older sister slammed the door at Lia’s hu plig ceremony which

Fadiman believes Lia’s life was “ruined not by septic shock or noncompliant parents but by cross-cultural misunderstanding” (Fadiman 1997). The Lee’s were not the only ones suffering from not understanding, the doctors were struggling with it as well. A clear example is found in chapter thirteen when the doctor has her parents sign a waiver that says if they take her home she will die. In the Hmong culture this is highly offensive and they believed that telling them this would cause evil spirits to get closer to Lia’s soul. This showed readers that it was just as important that the doctors understand the Lees cultural healing so that they could’ve worked together in Lia’s illness. One of her doctors, Dr. Neil Ernst, claimes that biomedicine was the only way to treats Lia’s illness but this is untrue in the culture of Hmong because biomedicine only treats the