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

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

Lia is born of a loving Hmong family, and just three months into her life, begins to reveal epileptic symptoms. According to the Hmong community, the condition is curable, and the presence of spirits in such a patient’s soul is considered a blessing. However, American doctors in a community medical center fail to understand and appreciate Lia’s parents’ approach to the child’s disease, and are only interested in saving this child’s life. As the conflict develops, it becomes apparent that the child will not be healed; but this is not without the doctors realizing the importance of compromise. In this book, Anne Fadiman claims, “I have come to believe that her [Lia’s] life

From our text, Race, Class, and Gender, we read Unit III E: The Structure of Social Institutions; The State and Violence: Policing the National Body: Sex, Race, and Criminalization; The Color of Justice; Rape, racism, and the Law; and Interpreting and Experiencing Anti-Queer Violence : Race, Class, and Gender Differences among LGBT Hate Crime Victims. We also encountered and excerpt from Social Work Practice With a Difference; The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman. The first four reading from our text explore the association of the manner in which state power organizes race, class, and gender. We also get a view of how the intersectional approach of race, class, and gender may help us to understand some forms

Lia Lee born and raised in America, but brought up as a Hmong, faced health issues specifically epilepsy. Her parents who practice the Hmong culture had a different view on how to handle Lia critical condition. Hmong did not believe in traditional medicine but believed in Txiv neeb, person with a healing spirit. Not only do they believe in a person with healing spirit to help cure their illness but also consider epilepsy as power; “Their seizures are thought to be evidence that they have the power to perceive things other people cannot see, as well as facilitating their entry into trances, a prerequisite for their journeys into the realm of the unseen” (Fadiman, 1998, p.21). Right at this moment is where you can tell conflict is going to occur.

1. The client system, in this case the Lee family, defines Lia’s seizures as both a spiritual and physical ailment. According to Fadiman (1997), “…the noise of the door had been so profoundly frightening that her soul had fled her body and become lost. They recognized the resulting symptoms as qaug dab peg, which means ‘the spirit catches you and you fall down’”(p.20). To the Lee family, Lia’s condition was as revered as it was frightening. While a person with qaug dab peg was traditionally held in high esteem in the Hmong culture, it was also terrifying enough that the Lee’s rushed Lia to the emergency room more than once in the first few months

The Lees, a Hmong family, came to the United States in the 1970s as refugees from Laos, and lived in Merced, California. Unlike most immigrants, the Hmong population was less amenable to assimilation. The traditional health beliefs and practices of the Hmong population were disputed by the practices of Western medicine. This became very event when the Lees took their three-month-old daughter, Lia Lee, to the emergency room in Merced. Lia was diagnosed with epilepsy a disease that had two different meaning among the Hmong population and Western medicine.

In ‘The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down’, Lia, a Hmong baby girl, is born to a Hmong family living in California as refugees away from their war torn land in Laos. In Laos the Lee’s where farmers and lived in the country according to their Hmong traditions and beliefs. In California they barely understood the language, much less Western culture or medicinal practices. In Hmong tradition, illness was seen as a spiritual problem rather than a physical problem and a Shaman that practiced spiritual ceremonies and used natural remedies was sought to prevent or cure certain illnesses and/or diseases; so when Lia suffered her first seizure at the age of 3 months and was taken to Mercer

In Anne Fadiman’s book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (1997), a Hmong family was faced with having to deal with westernized practices. Foua and Nao Kao, parents of Lia Lee, are forced to take Lia to Merced Community Medical Center, (MCMC), when she has a seizure. Lia’s parents believe that her seizure was the result of her soul being scared from the door slamming, thus escaped and became lost. MCMC has no Hmong interpreters to offer the Lees, so

This applied theory paper will analyze both the macro and micro analysis of the Novel, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman (Fadiman, 1997). In the book “The Spirit Catches You and Falls Down”, the character Lia illness resulted in a cultural divide between the Hmong culture and the American culture. Throughout this paper both the conflict theory and the family systems theory will be used to examine themes of behaviors among the characters in the text. The family and medical team use the applications of a number of different social work theories to navigate through her illness implementing a number of different strategies to nurse her to health. The author Fadiman explores the Lee’s family

Culture plays a major role in the spirit catches you and you fall by Ann Fadiman. Every chapter shares some aspect of Hmong history and culture: food, clothing, language, family structure, birthing rituals, and so on. The Hmong traditionally lived high in the mountains of Laos, where they practiced agriculture and subsisted primarily on rice, vegetables, herbs, and occasionally pork and chicken if the family could afford it. They believe most diseases have a spiritual cause that can be alleviated through traditional forms of healing such as rubbing the skin with coins, creating a vacuum by igniting cotton soaked in alcohol under a tiny cup, or drawing disease out with an egg. A tvix neeb, or shaman, could conduct more powerful healing; such a figure is thought to be able to get rid of evil spirits called dabs and retrieve lost souls. Certain aspects of Hmong culture, such as taboos against medical procedures, often conflict with the western culture of medicine, resulting in communication issues. Other aspects, such as utilizing animal sacrifice in shamanic ceremonies, to heal have led to conflicts with the American doctors to the point that rituals were banned in hospitals. Lia lees outcome was preventable if communication between both Hmong

“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.

I have to admit when I first read “The spirit catches you and you fall down” I thought it would be pretty boring turns out its one of the most interesting books I have ever read. The cultural conflicts can apply to anyone and knowing a little bit more now what the Hmong people have actually gone through can make everyone develop a great amount of respect for the culture. The Lee family continuously went full force colliding with the American ways in order to protect their traditions so they could preserve their culture. Unfortunately, in the end it didn’t help them but that was all they knew considering the fact that that the doctors at MCMC hospital didn’t really go out of their way to explain procedures it only makes sense for the Lee family to revert back to what they know in their traditions.

There are a lot of difference between the healing rituals of the Kung of the Kalahari and the Hindu in Northern India. The cultural environment and life styles of these two groups are drastically different. The Kung are small groups of nomads that move freely through the desert, they all live as equals, share everything among group members, and gather by watering holes during the dry times (Kinsley 1996: 39-40).Healers among these groups can be anyone that feels the num boil inside of them. Num is the healing power which is aroused by song and dance, this allows the healer to enter kia.

Our group chose ethnomedicine for our digital poster, bringing together the topics of neo-shamanism, organ transplants in biomedical organ transplants, Ayurveda, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In discussing potential intersectionality between our areas of interest, we quickly recognized a continuum that placed biomedicine—as a mechanistically informed approach focusing on individuals and pathologies—on one end of the spectrum, and shamanism—with its focus on the ‘unseen’ aspects of existence and the vital connection of all life forms (fig. 4)—at the other. The highly systemized nature of TCM and its emphasis on the mechanisms of physiology, pathologies and the anatomical system placed it next to biomedicine on the continuum; Ayurveda was closest to shamanism in our assessment, due to a more explicit acknowledgment of the interaction between the mental, personality and physical aspects of health. While this provided a base of comparison, we struggled with creating a theme that could portray the idea in a meaningful way—why is this continuum from biomechanical to spiritual important? How does it impact the lives of human beings? It was upon reflection on the mind/body dichotomy that we glimpsed insight suitable for a narrative; playing on the concept of body parts (fig. 1) in light of Jonathan’s focus on transplants, Kalycia brought up Frankenstein.