We Are All Frogs Or Cows By Anne Fadim The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Essay

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

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.

“Between the ages of eight months and four and a half years, Lia Lee was admitted to MCMC seventeen times and made more than a hundred outpatient visits to the emergency room and to the pediatric clinic at the Family Practice Center.” The Lee family was a regular visitor at the hospital but it did not make thing between the Lee family and the hospital any easier. There was many issues between Lia’s family and the Merced hospital staff. Many of these issues steamed from many different areas of things. Between the Lee’s a Hmong family and the American doctors at Merced Hospital there were several cultural differences on what both parties wanted. Cultural difference was not the only thing they did not see eye to eye on there was also a huge language barrier between the Lee family and the workers at Merced hospital.

Many years ago, an epileptic Hmong girl named Lia Lee entered a permanent vegetative state due to cross-cultural misunderstanding between her parents and her doctors. An author named Anne Fadiman documented this case and tried to untangle what exactly went wrong with the situation. Two key players in her narrative were Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp, the main doctors on Lia’s case. As Fadiman describes, “Neil and Peggy liked the Hmong, too, but they did not love them… [W]henever a patient crossed the compliance line, thus sabotaging their ability to be optimally effective doctors, cultural diversity ceased being a delicious spice and became a disagreeable obstacle.” (Fadiman 265) At first glance, this statement seems to implicate Neil and Peggy as morally blameworthy for a failure to be culturally sensitive enough. However, upon further inspection of the rest of the book, it becomes clear that Neil and Peggy’s failure to be more culturally sensitive to their Hmong patients was caused by structural issues in the American biomedical system. To prove this point, this paper will first present a background to Lia’s case, then discuss possibilities for assigning blame to Neil and Peggy, then show evidence for the structural issues in American biomedicine, before finally concluding.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman, is the story of two very different cultures lacking understanding for one another leading to a tragedy due to cultural incompetence. Today in America there are very many different cultures. Health care providers need to be aware of cultural diversity and sensitivity when caring for patients. If a health care provider is not sensitive towards a patient’s culture it can cause a relationship of mistrust to form, lead to barriers in the plan of care, and increase health care cost. The current guidelines to promote cultural competence in the clinical setting include completing a cultural diversity self-assessment, identify the need of the population served, evaluate barriers in the community and practice, educate staff to cultural diversities, schedule longer appointments, clarify limitations, and identify alternatives offered (Cash & Glass, 2014).

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is about the cross-cultural ethics in medicine. The book is about a small Hmong child named Lia Lee, who had epilepsy. Epilepsy is called, quag dab peg1 in the Hmong culture that translates to the spirit catches you and you fall down. In the Hmong culture this illness is sign of distinction and divinity, because most Hmong epileptics become shaman, or as the Hmong call them, txiv neeb2. These shamans are special people imbued with healing spirits, and are held to those having high morale character, so to Lia's parents, Foua Yang and Nao Kao Lee, the disease was both a gift and a curse. The main question in this case was could Lia have survived if her parent's and the doctors overcame

The case study of Lia Lee is interesting and serves as a cautionary tale as it explores the consequences of cultural misunderstanding. In this case both the parents and medical staff sought the same thing; they both wanted Lia to have a positive outcome. Unfortunately, both groups had distinct ideas regarding how to achieve the common objective. This division was rooted in each sides individual cultural beliefs.

What would it be like to come to a country and not understand anything about its health care system? To many this would be a very daunting task. Unfortunately, this is the scenario that the Lee family has to deal with in the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The Lee family, and the other thousands of Hmong immigrants, try to understand and navigate the complex and sometimes confusing health care system of the United States. As the book points out, the values and ideals of the Hmong culture and the United States health care system are not always the same and sometimes come into great conflict with each other. Lia Lee was unfortunately the person stuck in the middle of this great conflict.

“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.

Anne Fadiman wrote this book to document the conflict between cultural barriers and how they affect medical issues. In this book, Lia Lee is a Hmong child was has epilepsy and battles cultural medical differences. The main struggle in this story is the conflict between the doctors and parents because they cannot seem to get on the same page. While writing the book, Fadiman stated that there was a “clash of cultures”. (Fadiman, preface) Meaning, there are two different sides to the story and the problem has not be solved.

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.

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.

Society is built upon a foundation of norms, but not all individuals adhere to said norms, some are outliers. If the actions of an individual causes pain onto another, society defines that the normal reaction for that individual would be to exhibit a state of empathy, but this is not always the case, as there are those who do not feel or exhibit the normal psychological reactions to differing scenarios (sociopaths). As individuals’ progress and experience obstacles in their lives, they become familiar with the different aspects of their mind, such as their persona, shadow, and self, ultimately achieving individuation. In

In any case, providing competent care to a patient of a different culture must first start with an understanding of the culture itself (Potter & Perry, 2011). Culture is

Empathy has played in a key role in the way society runs for many years. Some people are empathetic towards everyone while others show little to no empathy at all. Many people are making a case on whether or not there should be a greater emphasis put on empathy throughout society. Some say that without empathy society lacks the ability to feel what others are feeling, while others say that feeling for others doesn’t always call them to action. Instead of a greater emphasis on empathy throughout society, there should be a greater emphasis on moral codes throughout the community.