The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Analysis

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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, written by Anne Fadiman, emulates on the ways in which cultural ignorance can have drastic effects on the lives of people caught in between two cultures. Published in 1997, the book chronicles the struggles of a Laos refugee family, and their experience with the health care system in Merced, California. This story centers on Lia Lee, a young Hmong child diagnosed with epilepsy. At three months old; Yer, Lia’s older sister, slams a door that triggers Lia’s first sensors. Her parents, Foua and Neo Kao, believe that this noise causes her soul to flee and diagnose her with qaug dab peg, “the spirt catches you and you fall down.” While the family is concerned with the health of her daughter they also see her sickness as something special. This is a beautifully written book- you feel for everyone in the story. …show more content…

For Lia, this collision ends fatal as she relied on them both for her survival and wellbeing. These realities failed to help this girl because of their mutual ignorance and prejudice for one another. In many ways this is a failure of cultural pathology and not biological pathology. As Fadiman explains: “I have come to believe that her life was not ruined by septic shock or noncompliant parents but by cross-cultural misunderstanding” (262). This kind of cultural ignorance takes on faces of conflicting languages, religions, and cultural

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