Analysis of Anne Fadiman's 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down'

The Hmong’s believe in shamans. Shamans are religious specialists commonly found in small-scale egalitarian societies. They are believed to have the power to contact powerful cosmic beings directly on behalf of others, sometimes by traveling to the cosmic realm to communicate with them. Shamans are

In Hmong’s, they have their own traditional beliefs in which they hardly ever alter due to a different atmosphere. Some of the Hmong beliefs are they prefer traditional medicine, are culturally active, host ritual ceremonies, and are spirituality influenced. In the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, refers to the Hmong culture and their beliefs on medicine while their baby Lia Lee, is suffering from epilepsy in which they have a hard decision. Traditional Hmong’s have their own medicinal beliefs which they obey prior to obtaining Western medicine. The gulf between Western medicine and Hmong health beliefs is an impossible abyss. Also, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down describes the life of Hmong refugees assimilating to

I found much of the traditional Hmong birth practices highly interesting. For instance, the Hmong believe that if the pregnant mother did not strictly eat the foods she craved, certain deformities would result to the child. They also find it true that drinking hot water during the labor will assist in unlocking the birth canal. After the birth, the placenta is buried by the father, so that the when that person dies, their soul can return to its” first jacket” (jacket meaning placenta in Hmong language), in order to continue it’s after death journey. On the other hand, I feel that a few of their specific practices could potentially be very dangerous. Foua gave birth to twelve of her children on the dirt floor in the home that her father had

By erecting alters in homes and placing shrines in fields and along trails, they try to drive away the evil spirits that infect their people. If a treatment from a Shaman does not work, the people do not blame the shaman. Instead, they see that the evil spirits could not be driven from the person’s body. Symbols and patterns were decorating on the clothing that the Hmong women made from hemp. These patterns and symbols were created from dyes that came from vegetables and were used to drive away evil spirits and attract friendly ones.

Many live under the assumption that those who come to the United States want to become Americanized and assimilate to the melting pot our culture has formed into. This is the populations ethnocentric belief, which is the belief that the ways of one’s culture are superior to the ways of a different culture, that wants others to melt into the western ways. In Ann Faidman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Faidman fails to completely remain objective when demonstrating how cross-cultural misunderstandings create issues in the healthcare field, specifically between the Hmong and western cultures that created dire consequences between the Lee’s and their American doctors. Faidman uses her connections with the Hmong and the doctors who cared for them in order to disclose the different views, beliefs and practices the Hmong and Western cultures practiced. With her attempt to be culturally relative to the situation, Faidman discusses the series of events and reasons as to why the Lee’s faced the fate that they did and how it parallels to the ethnocentrism in the health care system.

Jeanine Hilt was exceptional for her appreciation of the Lee family and attempts to become well-versed in Hmong culture. She demonstrated a willingness to learn from them and admirably strong commitment to advocacy on their behalf. Because of her determination to understand their background and their personal lives, she gained their respect and formed a very strong rapport with them. More people, and especially more social workers, should take that kind of approach to clients.

able to get rid of. At the end of the poem Sexton admits the thoughts of suicide are something you can never get rid of, “and yet she waits for me, year after year” (line 25). Sexton justifies the reasons for her suicide by saying that her thoughts and bad memories will never stop coming back because this has been happening for years and years now there is no going back for Sexton. She leaves us with the last stanza filled with unfinished things. This could be a metaphor for her life that is unfinished because of her death occurrence.

In Hmong there is a total of eighteen surnames and it does not matter what dialect the person belong in. The eighteen surnames have sets of rules that all Hmong dialects have to up keep. First, two couple of the same surname cannot get married, whether they are of different dialect because people of the same surname are consider “brother and sister” and there will be no incest. Second, to up keep the forbidden; in the surname Yang, males are not allowed to eat the heart of any animal because it is forbidden. There are forbidden thing other surnames cannot do and it goes the same for all dialects. Third, Shamanism religious guideline; during the funeral it forbidden for the relative of he dead, to eat spicy and very dry food because by eating spicy and dry food it deprived the loss loved one to crossover. There are more sets of rules, but I felt these makes a stronger argument. What notion the people may be seeing, there is a change in newer generation and we do not see each other

“In the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”, Anne Fadiman explores the subject of cross cultural misunderstanding. This she effectively portrays using Lia, a Hmong, her medical history, the misunderstandings created by obstacles of communication, the religious background, the battle with modernized medical science and cultural anachronisms. Handling an epileptic child, in a strange land in a manner very unlike the shamanistic animism they were accustomed to, generated many problems for her parents. The author dwells on the radically different cultures to highlight the necessity for medical communities to have an understanding of the immigrants when treating them.

Being a Hmong means their spiritual beliefs are a lot different than those of an American. For instance, a mother a Hmong child would birth her baby in their home with her own two hands. On the other hand, an American mother would birth her child in a hospital with medical staff. When Lia was born, she was born in the Merced Community Medical Center and at that point in her life she did not have epilepsy. At three months old Lia began having seizures. The seizures were blamed on her older sister because she once slammed a door and frightened Lia. Her parent’s belief was the slamming of the door scared her soul out of her body and made her lost. With an American family, this is not something they would typically believe in.

The story takes place in Los Angeles, California in the 1980s and starts off with a young Mexican boy called Erick who lives with his mom. He has an aspiration to play baseball and he also prays that his mom would find the perfect man. The author portrays Erick to be a quiet kid who would never spoke “Erick said nothing” (Gilb 2). This makes it hard for both readers and characters in the story like his mom to know exactly how he felt because he never really expressed himself. Erick wants nothing but happiness for his mom. She falls in love with Roque. Roque isn’t rich but was the type of man Erick wanted for her. One that would love her for who she was and not take advantage of her like the men she previously dated. An important word that stands out to me in “Uncle Rock” is proudest used in “Roque was the proudest man, full of joy because he was with her. It wasn’t his fault he

Another facet of radio that is considered as one of its most important aspects is storytelling, and particularly, the advancements Irna Phillips made in the field. In fact, Phillips was a part-time radio actress when she was asked to help write radio’s first serial drama called Painted Dreams. This soap opera, with related storylines about the multiple characters’ lives debuted in 1930 in Chicago. She would then go on to create 18 other serials, destined for both radio and television in the next 43 years. These types of soap operas series would mostly be broadcasted during the weekday daytime timeslots, five days of week, and when the listeners would be housewives. This caused the shows to be watched and consumed predominantly by a female audience.

In this paper, I will explain how the article “The Lady and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers, and the Challenge of Welfare Justice” by Gwendolyn Mink relates to the thematic focus of working women and the Marxist and socialist branch of feminism. In Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, Rosemarie Tong explains that Marxist and socialist feminists understand women’s oppression as a labor issue. Women’s work is not viewed as a productive contribution to society. One of the ways Marxist and socialist feminists sought to improve women’s oppression was through the wages-for-housework campaign of the 1970s, which fought for work done in the domestic sphere to be paid and respected by society. In this same vein, Mink’s article can be viewed as a continuation of sorts of the wages-for-housework campaign. Mink suggests that poor single mothers have the right for their work to be recognized by society and supported economically like the Marxist and socialist feminist in the 1970s.

Have you ever done something your parents told you not to do. Of course you have, everyone has at one point, some of us did it because we wanted independence or just to show that we could. Well, when I was 7 I had a weird obsession with touching the eyes of fish, I don't know why they just looked shiny, glossy, soft, and smooth. My grandparents had a pet catfish and I would try to touch him and my grandma would always say, “Cyanne Marie leave that fish alone!”, one day my grandma was cleaning the fish tank and I snuck around the back to try and pick him up. A minute later I'm running towards the house screaming that the fish had a knife on his back and cut me, my grandparents both laughed at me and to this day they keep reminding me about the