In the last chapter of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the tvix neeb and relatives were at the Lee’s house to perform a ceremony. To begin the first ceremony, a cord was tied around the smaller pig’s neck, in order to bind the pig’s soul to the souls it would protect. The pig’s throat was slit and was brought outside to gut and clean it. A chicken was boiled for the ceremony as well. Lia’s family surrounded her and the larger pig was brought into the room and a horn was thrown at the pig to see if it would accept it. When the pig accepted it, they held down the pig and cut its neck. Then the tvix neeb did the most dangerous part of the ceremony where he flipped his headdress over his face, which blocked his sight of the world but …show more content…
It was hard to maintain a sacred atmosphere because of the television lights and the sound of the refrigerator. The family hoped the ceremony would at least make Lia happier and stop crying at night. This passage was also important because you could tell how they made sure to treat the animals with some respect. For example, the pig was killed, but the pig was told it would be well rewarded and its soul would be set free at the end of the year. Killing animals for rituals seems hard to understand from another culture, but you can tell they don’t intend to be mean to the animals and at least reward them in their afterlife for their sacrifice. It also reveals a cultural respect and a connection to the natural world. The chapter uses rich details to help you imagine and feel what is happening. After reading this chapter I noticed the importance of writing this book because the author allowed readers to bring Lia back to life in a form, by engaging us in her story. This relates to a few themes seen in this book. Family is an important theme in this book and connected us to the …show more content…
In this article it talks about how people believed they could make a tea that would make them sterile. Another example Is how they would simply ask the gods, which was usually a prayer. This can be related to The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, since in Hmong culture they would get things that were ingested (many more forms), and it would “cure” someone. They had beliefs about certain things that would heal someone if they wanted to get rid of a dab, in this case. This relates to the Magic reading, but it a different sense, where they don’t call it magic. This helps my understanding because people have different beliefs and are taught different things in their culture and as we analyze these things we can see the differences between people’s beliefs and
The main characters, the Hmongs, are a culture of refugee families that supported CIA efforts in Laos. Their culture embeds deep spirituality into its health care, by the doctors of the Merced County hospital. The notion that herbs were strictly to heal the spirit was of course a source of contention for the physicians of the hospital, though nurses might feel that the symbolic effect alone is worth seizing. In other words, whether the physicians ...
The Hmong culture is firmly rooted in their spiritual belief of animism, ancestral worship and reincarnation. These beliefs connect them to their sense of health and well-being. They view illness as having either a natural or a spiritual cause. A spiritual cause results in a “loss of souls” or is an action or misdeed that may have offended an ancestor’s spirit (California Department of Health Services, 2004, Purnell, 2013, p. 317). The soul escapes the body and may not be able to find its way back home. The Hmong also believe that a combination of natural and supernatural cause’s results in illness, and spells or curses, violation of taboos, accidents, fright, and infectious disease are other causes for illness (Centers for Disease Control
I chose to write about this chapter because it was one of the positive chapters in the book that we have read so far. The first story that was told in the chapter was about Dai Manju. One of the sentences that stood out to me was “There was almost no furniture in the dim shack except for a coffin that the father had made for the great-aunt” (167). This was troubling to me because I cannot imagine walking into my living room and just seeing a coffin for one of my grandparents
The chapter starts off with Ying-Ying visiting Lena and her husband in their new home, which she thinks is overpriced and poorly built. Ying-Ying is able to see just how unhappy her daughter is in her marriage. Ying-Ying also went through a miserable marriage so she is able to relate to the kind of suffering that her daughter is going through. At her aunts wedding, when she was sixteen, Ying-Ying saw a man and knew that he would become her husband. He tried to attract Ying-Ying by cutting a watermelon down the middle with a knife. Soon enough, Ying-Ying married him. When he found out that she was going to be having a baby, he left her. Ying-Ying was so upset that she killed the baby before it was even born. Later in her life, while working in a shop, she met Clifford St. Clair. It was obvious that Clifford liked her but she didn’t feel the same way, but when the news came that her first husband has dead, it left an empty hole in her heart. To fill that hole she married Clifford and moved to America with him where she soon gave birth to...
Family is an important concept. This novel reveals the strength of family by allowing characters to never give up on each other. One example Riordan used is, “Like a miracle, a conch horn sounded from the smoky picture. The call of
The author begins the story with a strong statement, “I found myself in a Chinese funeral parlor because of a phone call I made to my cleaning lady” (Schmitt); it takes the reader right into the funeral parlor and draws the reader into the story: how she got to the funeral parlor and what she doing there was the question I had. She starts the story with some background about how she got to China. Then moves on to the funeral that was happening in her neighbors’ home. She describes how the family was grievously weeping as she was walking toward her apartment. She noticed what happened and wonder why they were weeping. “Do you know why the neighbors are very sad?” she asked her cleaning lady.
The arms of the mother are personified an indication of the conflict that Lae Choo faced of being accepted into the new way of life and remembering how life in China felt like. She “sank to the floor with anguish as “dinner remained on the table” (170). Her hungry arms exhibit the
Communication is cited as a contributing factor in 70% of healthcare mistakes, leading to many initiatives across the healthcare settings to improve the way healthcare professionals communicate. (Kohn, 2000.)
The story is about a prostitute who has to do her job next to her young, sleeping son’s bed. The mother tells him that she gets dressed up because she is waiting for an angel to come. This is an unforgettable moment because she lies to her own son about something so outrageous to keep him innocent and happy. When she says, “the night is the time I dread the most in my life. Yet if I am to live, I must depend on it,” she explains how she hates her profession but knows she has to do it for her and her son’s well-being. The fact that her son is right beside her as she works as a prostitute really emphasizes the mother’s love for the child. Although it is absurd to have her child in the same room it shows that the mother gave up her body to random men to take care of her son. This brings sadness to the story and made the mood of the chapter gloomy and
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
She hated it there, so much that Lia felt as if all the hard work was on her shoulders. She got the most attention because she was the first to arrive, but she didn’t want that. Lia seemed exhausted all the time, I assumed that of course, because everyone was worn out and tired. She would be in charge of crops everyday all day. The other slaves never really talked with her, but they respected her, she was younger, but yet somehow did the most work. So many long hard days in the village kept adding up, and they were just too much for her eventually and others saw that. She ended up becoming so exhausted that she passed out in the middle of working and she was beaten all night, everyone could hear her screams. Lia was very confident that someday she would be free and that maybe if she worked hard enough, they would let her go and of course being hungry and dehydrated can make you easily manipulated. She soon enough found out that it would never happen. Two years later she was eighteen and didn’t get anything special but 18 lashes. She was tired of it, all of this work for what? To be beaten, no way she was dealing with it any longer. On day 854 she had an idea, she knew the crops better than anyone which means she would know what crops were good to eat and what
In this passage, it is quite clear what kind of life the old woman lived. She was following her desity, and "even after her death continued feeding animal life". This may sound sad to some, that she was alone and with the animals, but really it is a beautiful tale of a woman who cared so much for these living creatures and took good care of them.
Traditional healing refers to a set of practices passed down through generations which intend to cure and prevent disease. In short, traditional medicine is the practice of health care based on traditional philosophy and the use of traditional medicine. In Africa, it presents as a holistic health care strategy which relies on an accumulation of knowledge of herbs and remedies which include plants, insects, and parts of animals. Traditional African healing is intertwined with traditional religions and spirituality. In Africa, traditional healing is administered by two different types of practitioners: sangoma (also called ngoma)—spiritual healers and diviners— and inyanga—herbalists. Although Africa is a continent of diverse cultures and tribes, traditional healers such as these exist across continent, providing 80% of the care for the population. From this information, it is evident that traditional healing is a important practice in the experience of a modern African.
There is a social exchange between these two groups of individuals, where not only a sharing of food is evident, but also a sharing of thoughts. The couple pertains to be free in life, but in fact places restrictions upon not only themselves but also other people. Fangfang asks if the young boy is the man’s son, and then continues, “What about your wife?” A projection of how things are supposed to be is happening within this conversation, upholding to the image of perfect, and a perfect world with father and son, husband and wife relationships. The man and boy show that even though their lives aren’t perfect as this young couple may think they have enough love to be happy and content. The little boy has the cage with grasshoppers symbolizes people of China, who are locked in their thoughts and who have no idea how the world lives. When the man gets up and leaves the conversation being held by them, life intervenes and suddenly the control that they tried to have gets taken away, and “We felt the chill of the mountain air.” (p15) Their perfect ideology of what perfect is, gets a concept of reality placed upon it, and changes the entire illusion that they live in, as life starts to breathe in over them.
The image of a short rope hanging from the dog’s neck is repeated throughout the piece to symbolize both, a past struggle, as well as a current obstacle, hindering his ability to move forward smoothly on his journey. Furthermore, the rope represents a past mentality of slavery and how even though this slave is now free, he isn’t really ‘free’ at all. The dragging rope is a constant reminder of where he has been and who he is on the surface. Society has fixed this idea that he carries no value and although he is persistent with repentance, this chastisement is seemingly perpetual. When the child introduced the dog to the family, “scorn was leveled at him from all eyes” as he made his case to the “family council,” announcing why this dog is worthy enough to become a member of the house (Crane 13). As it becomes evident that the dog is no longer being accepted, he becomes internally embarrassed and filled with shame as he is put on a display of mockery. The father returns home from work “in a particularly savage temper” and decided the dog could stay, but only because he believed it would provoke hostility in the family (Crane 13). Soon after, the child took the dog to his room and cried softly, while the father began his typical violent outbursts on the wife. The father’s ill humor is what permits the ‘acceptance’ of the dog in the family. A few nights later, the father storms the apartment drunk and throws the dog out of the window and the dark-brown dog falls to his