The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Chapter 11 Summary

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

Communication between generations has always been an issue and with that, a misunderstanding of the past and culture comes along. In Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club, she shows the stories of four Chinese mothers and their American born daughters. Throughout the novel, the characters encounter both external and internal conflicts in order to contrast the different relationships held by the mothers and daughters with their past and where they came from. The mother-daughter pair of Lindo and Waverly Jong shows the gap between the generations very clearly. Everything is different, from language to name to marriage.

What happens when two very different or even mutually exclusive cultural perspective are forced into contact with one another? In Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there is a division between the shamanistic insubordinate cultural of Hmong refugees in Merced, California and the cold analytical approach of western medicine. In the early 1980s, the child of a Hmong refugee family in Merced, California is born with epilepsy, her name is Lia Lee. Anne Fadiman traces the interaction between these two cultures and Lia’s disease, she reviews that misunderstanding and miscommunication can have calamitous consequences for all involved. The author introduces many characters throughout the book and they all

This prejudice is another strong concept, as the American doctors continued to underestimate, disrespect, and undermine Foua Yang (mother) and Nao Kao Lee (father) and their Hmong way of life. Vice versa, the Lees would refuse doctors’ orders in administering medicines. Ruane and Cerulo hit it right on the nail when describing prejudice,(20) which is a prejudgment directed towards members of certain social groups, as a feeling associated with immigrant groups, those that contain individuals who have left their homelands in pursuit of a new life in a new country. There is a clear indication of an in-group vs. an out-group, as it is noted from Second Thoughts, “an in-group carry unrealistically positive views of their group. At the same time…share unrealistically negative views of the out-group.” The cultural barriers are built due to “the one-sided relationship,” of knowledge only found in the unyielding West, with the prominent racial discrimination found among the white, English-speaking doctors and their intimidate dismissal of the existence of any Hmong medical practices/knowledge. The application of assimilation (20) is important to the in-group, as they simply believe that the immigrants will come to embrace the same values and customs of their new ‘homeland.’

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997) is an ethnography written by Anne Faidman. It tells the story of Lia Lee, a Hmong girl with severe epilepsy, and her family’s journey with managing the condition and the cultural barriers that posed great challenges in Lia’s care. Lia was diagnosed with epilepsy at age 1. It was her family’s opinion that the condition was a spiritual gift. Lia’s parents, Nao Kao and Foua, were wary of the American medical system, preferring to treat Lia in the Hmong way. Under the more spiritually focused care of her parents, Lia continued to have severe seizures; at the age of 4 ½, she slipped into a coma that would last the rest of her life. This book serves as a testament to the importance of cultural competency

Structural Causes of Cultural Insensitivity in Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

4. There were many people affected by the Lia’s seizures and the cultural clashes that ensued. I will focus on the two that seemed most significant. The first people who were affected were her family, namely her parents. Nao Kao and Foua were obviously distressed that their youngest daughter was having these seizures. The Hmong in general are excellent parents, providing their children with an extraordinary amount of love and attention (Fadiman, 1997, p. 22) and I can’t even imagine the amount of grief the Lees dealt with as they watched Lia’s soul slip away during those several tumultuous years of her life. Because the Lees blamed the medical system for the end result of Lia’s vegetative state, they became increasingly angry people, Nao Kao in particular. Fadiman tells us how angry he was several times in the book, angry enough to try to steal Lia away from the hospital (p. 213). While Foua more evenly tempered than her husband, she did show severe signs of depression and even suicide when Lia was first taken away from them and placed in

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story by author Anne Fadiman, which explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia’s parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of communication between them led to tragedy.1The lack of communication due to cultural misunderstanding, mistrust, lack empathy, and poor health literacy led to care being comprised for Lia, which also affected both her parents and healthcare providers.

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

This entry book” spirit catches you and you fall down” is talking about the cultural conflict between the Hmong's culture and American culture. These differences are brought by the strong beliefs in the Hmong's culture, and the difficulties to accept a new culture. There is a lot of misunderstanding/conflicts between these two cultures in the book. Usually, when the doctors are trying to convince the Lee's family about Lia's treatments, the Lees are stuck in their ways and really hard to accept what the doctors have to say about their beloved daughter. They believe in their own ways, even if it is helpful or not. They refuse to accept the doctors' ideas, and because the treatments that the doctors give are based on the scientific experiences, so the doctors believe that the Hmong's ideas are unreasonable or even stupid .However, when the culture conflicts face the love, these cultural differences become meaningless, which lead me to think that love is the only way that bring these cultures to connect.

The Lees believe that for an illness to be cured the soul has to be called back through the ritual sacrifice of animals such as chicken and pig. That is, they believe in the “Shamanistic ritual performed by a trix neeb in which an animal is sacrificed and its soul battered for the vagrant soul of a sick Person” (Fadiman, 1997, p.100). According to Lia's father Nao Kao “Sometimes the soul goes away but the doctors don’t believe it…The doctors can fix some sickness that involve the body and blood but for us Hmong some people get sick because of their soul, so they need spiritual things. With Lia it was good to do a little medicine and a little neeb” (Fadiman, 1997,p.100). The medical care that the doctors at Merced were providing was without animal sacrifices therefore the Lee’s believe that it could not make their daughter well.

“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 book titled The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: Talks about a Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures written by Anne Fadiman. Anne Fadiman is an American essayist and reporter, who interests include literary journalism. She is a champion of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Salon Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest. In the book, Anne Fadiman explores the clash between a county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the health care of Lia Lee. Lia Lee is a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy, whose parents and the doctors wanted the best treatment for her, but the lack of communication cause a tragedy. The essay paper will state and explain what went wrong between Lia’s family and the doctors. The central point is a lack of understanding between them leads to Lia’s tragedy.

"Who Will Light the Candles When Mother 's Gone?" is a classic example of the first generation immigrant 's struggle to find their place in America. On the one side, they have their own deep, rich heritage at home that is the only way that their parents often know how to live. However, on the other hand, they have the American culture. The American culture is often the culture that they socially grow up in. It 's who their friends are and what they see at school, in stores and TV. The children in these families are often living in two worlds, trying to resonate and connect one with another, usually without much success. In this essay, he loves his mother dearly and he has a deep sense of appreciation for her rituals and the various aspects of her Vietnamese origins, yet he cannot force himself to personally identify with it. As such, his relationship with his mother became a struggle until they eventually found even ground. Even though they are at peace, he knows that he will still not be the one to light the candles for the dead once she 's gone simply because that 's not who he is. His identity is no longer rooted in the Vietnamese traditions, even if that makes him a bit sad. I do struggle a bit with this one in particular, because I can see where it could definitely be considered a story of conformity and rebellion, I feel that Lam doesn 't fully have a desire to fit here or there. It merely is that he has learned who he is and what he will and will not do. He hasn 't