The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
When three-month-ancient Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital urgent situation room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia’s parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run “Silent War” in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less agreeable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia’s pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as fervently to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her tale became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.
Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their thoughts about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community inscription a division between body and soul, and concerns itself nearly exclusively with the ex-. Lia’s doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg–the spirit catches you and you fall down–and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.Amazon.com Review
Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family tree of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: “What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance.” The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, “There are no villains in Fadiman’s tale, just as there are no heroes. People are open as she saw them, in their humility and their shortcoming–and their nobility.”
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After carefully reading this book, one can easily draw the conclusion that this book is merely a plea for sympathy of Hmongs living in America. Obviously the leader wants a much more expansive government health care system to take in these immigrants. The leader makes it apparent to the reader that it was not the Hmongs fault for immigrating here and apt a burden to our system. She justifies it through her vendetta against U.S. involvement in Vietnam/Laos. Reasonably clearly Fadiman wishes to prompt her extreme views in order to gain sympathy for these poor, uneducated, helpless Hmongs.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I had to read this abortion of a book for school and I can easily say it is the worst book I have ever read. It drones on about medical mumbo giant that you’d have to be a doctor to know, and preaches tolerance to people who judge in alternative types of healing (which obviously will lead to death lacking real medical attention). No one else in my class who read this liked it either, avoid at all costs.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
While the Hmong culture’s values of stubborn solidarity, family tree unity, & a new desire to become educated should help them thrive in America, this book should not be a chapter in their cultural history that they are proud of.
Chosen ignorance, even if due to a negative attitude from generations of abuse, is a pretty poor way to show like for your child. The mom never even learned numbers so she could dial a phone for help. & animistic superstitions make for some entertaining tales, but people from an American upbringing that really judge them aren’t playing with a full deck of cards.
In synopsis, a wayyyyy long drawn out, super dull, overly detailed, tedious tale. Could easily have been told in 5 honestly appealing chapters & still kept in the sob tales about how the Hmong suffered, don’t really want to be here, & it’s not their fault.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
In fleeting: elongated. Fadiman has the perspicacoius ability to take an anecdotal quip and stretch it out to the part of, well, this 300 page book. Buyer beware: you’re getting much more than you bargain for with this one. Overly-point med-speak, tens of pages of garment description and an overview of the Vietnam War all seemed to have enough weight that Fadiman could lock them comfortably in this tale about a sick small girl. Whether you’re looking for action, drama, comedy or informative writing, you’ll find none of it here. Let’s just hope this is Fadiman’s second and final work.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
in the spirit catches you, fadiman does a fine job of presenting an objective tale about cultural misunderstanding secondary to culture clash. a family tree that fled their country due to warfare immigrated (legally and not so much) to the united states in an attempt to save their culture from being torn apart by the war. clans, as goes the culture, were split upon entering the u.s. but during the few years the families and clans spent in the u.s., they would locate additional clans and go to the same city. there was not too much of an attempt by these hmong people to know or inform themselves of the american culture that they adapted when they stirred to the u.s. (though there were 2 hmong mentioned in the book that bordered the american/hmong cultures, both originally hmong). most did not work, tended to gardens, reproduced all of the time (as they were expected to lose children due to the war and manual labor, but i knew of know war in the u.s. in the 1980s aside from the black and white thing). one family tree has a child that is a severe epileptic and the family tree thinks that the child should be revered due to their culture. health care was finally sought on the child’s behalf by the parents. what ensues is a long tale of american science (who needs empirical evidence when i can judge?) pitted against pure superstition from the family tree’s religious beliefs. the leader does a fantastic deal of medical chart research, interviews, etc. that help in the presentation of the tale. she also does a excellent job of informing, indirectly, about the power of american doctors and the sad and hard life the family tree has been agreed. objective, yes, but what about the family tree having fun and the not so fun times for the doctors? this book is not a must read but gives thoughts, to americans, as to where tax money goes.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5