The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (Fadiman, 1997) is an ethnography based on the story of Lia Lee. Lia was born to Hmong immigrant parents in Merced, California in 1982. The story is recounted in the Lee family and their collaborations with the medicinal group in Merced being taken care of by Lia, who develops an epileptic seizure at around 3 months of age. Dialect hindrances and conviction framework differences
In “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman, the whole story revolves around Lia, the thirteenth child of Lee family. Lee family was a refugee family in USA and Lia was their first child to be born in US. At the time of time of birth, she was declared as a healthy child but at the age of three it was founded that she is suffering from epilepsy. In the words of western or scientific world the term epilepsy mean mental disorder of a person and in Hmong culture, epilepsy is referred
Eric Lovett Jr.- Klemm Fund Projects Abroad Internship Program In Anne Fadiman’s, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a young Hmong girl named Lia, endures an egregious form of epilepsy characterized by several general mal seizures each day. Lia and her family, are Hmong refugees from Laos that sought asylum by living in a highly concentrated Hmong community in California. The Hmong’s beliefs and cultures can be compared to typical Western culture, including their beliefs in the effectiveness
Book Report: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Huyen Huynh Union University Book Report: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells a story about the Lee family and the challenge they had to face when their daughter, Lia Lee, was diagnosed with epilepsy. In particular, during Lia's hospitalized the Lee family's struggle with a language barrier, and the cultural different between western and eastern medicine. Anne Fadiman allows readers to
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
The book, Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is a true story narrative on the life of Lia Lee. Lia Lee was a child who was born in the 1980s in Merced, California. She was a Hmong child who was epileptic. Epilepsy is a brain disorder in which a person has repeated seizures (convulsions) over time. Seizures are episodes of disturbed brain activity that cause changes in attention or behavior. Lia suffered from severe grand mal seizures since the age of three months. When the first seizure occurred
mistakes, leading to many initiatives across the healthcare settings to improve the way healthcare professionals communicate. (Kohn, 2000.) As part of my Culture, Health and Illness class, I undertook a critical analysis of the book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” by Anne Fadiman. This book was published in 1997, and documents the struggle of a Hmong family from Laos in communicating with and understanding the American health
The Spirit Catches You and You fall Down [Type the document subtitle] Najeeb Alwawi TRANS 340- 4/20/2014 Najeeb Alwawi Proff. Ramsden April 18, 2014 “The spirit catches you and you fall down” In the novel, “The spirit catches you and you fall down”, Anne Fadiman was brilliantly able to capture how communication between other cultures takes place in the medical community. She writes about the experience of a Hmong family, the Lee’s, to portray the dissimilarities between two distinct cultures
concerns most immigrants and frightens people. In the movie Crash by Paul Haggis, it displays the clash of different ethnicity and their challenge in the world. People were stereotyped, sexually abused, and judged. In the book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman describes a Hmong family struggling to help with her medical problem, but the language barrier between the family and the hospital causes conflicts. America offers a great challenge to its people because of the vast diversity
example of a disease is epilepsy a neurological condition that causes the body to have random seizures. Both examples are of the same disease, but one is how the culture views it while the other is how biology views it. Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Print. 2) Medical pluralism was used to treat Lia in Fadiman’s book as she was treated using both Western medicine and
The Spirit Catches You and You Realize You’re Wrong How would it feel to flee from post-war Communist forces, only to face an ethnocentric population of people in a new country? In Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, a portrait of a disquieting, often times touching, ethnography (i.e. a book that details particular data of an extended period of time an anthropologist spent living closely with a community of individuals during his or her field work) of Fadiman's experience living
ordinary experience of every average man and woman”, said by Thomas Hardy, perfectly correlates to the story, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman due to the unusual immigration story of a hmong family and the ups and downs of medical history. This story focuses in on a hmong family and their journey trying to cure their daughter Lia from epilepsy and a “dab”(demon/evil spirit). The statement “A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling; it must have something more unusual
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
cultural biases was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Faldiman. I found it helpful to use Google maps to get a visual of the location Hmong refugees came from in Laos and mentally trace their journey across the Pacific to settle in Merced, CA. There are two main cultures discussed in this book which includes the subordinate Hmong Lee family and the dominant White American doctors who tried to help Lia with her medical or spirit issues depending on which culture you asked. Faldiman stated
The Ethnographic novel The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story of a the Lees, a Hmong refugee family from Laos. They moved to the United States in 1980. The author of this book follows the Lee family closely and records their interactions with people in America. This book has often been described as the “collision of two cultures” which is clear to see through the Lees experiences in America. The reason these two cultures “collide” is due to the monumental difference in comparing the
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
Envision your family, compelled to escape your nation out of dread for your freedom and life. At the same time, you abandon all belongings, and experience serious emotional issues and you maybe have to separate from your family. In the midst of it all you finally at last settle down in another area, you battle to coordinate into another nation, confronting communication obstructions and an insufficient comprehension of the new nation's way of life and traditions. While a large portion of us and our
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is a nonfiction book that brings to light the clash of Hmong culture and Western medicine in Merced, California. Anne Fadiman tells the story of a Hmong immigrant family, the Lees, and the unfortunate condition of epilepsy that their daughter Lia suffers from. Throughout the book the reader sees great conflict inflicted on medical practitioners due to the Lee’s own cultural beliefs and the frustration suffered by the family due to miscommunication
about others. A disease can be a “gift” because it teaches us valuable lessons we would never have learned without it. In the literary works Tuesdays with Morrie and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, the sickly patients in both stories profoundly influence themselves, their families,
The book narrates about the conflict between modern medicine and the ancient beliefs amongst Hmong culture.The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a book written about the life of Lia Lee. Lia is a Hmong child living with epilepsy in America. Her devastating story shows the risks and dangers of cross-cultural communication in the medical field. The book details an account of the fight over the body and soul of this sick girl. The author provides unbiased and balanced view of what happened,