Summary Of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Anne Fadiman

The Hmong were well known for being a self-sufficient people producing their own food, making their own weapons, hunting their own game including birds, monkeys, deer, wild pigs, tigers, and more. They fished, gathered fruit, wild vegetables, and honey. These individuals were farmers and have very intimate relationships with the natural world(pg 120). Foua Yang grew up in a mountainous clan such as this. She had revealed that everyone in her village performed the same tasks therefore causing no class system. “Since no one knew how to read no one felt deprived by the lack of literacy.” They believed that anything of importance that the children needed to know could be learned through spoken word or by example. The elders were essential for teaching the younger generation among many things how to hold sacred their ancestors, play the qeej, conduct a funeral, how to court a lover, how to track a deer, and how to build a

     The Hmong had trouble adapting to American life. With no driver’s license or bank account, they had to make a living doing whatever they could. Not knowing the language in a foreign land doesn’t help either. The Hmong women adapted much more quickly than the men did because of the fact that they interacted more with English-speaking people. While the men were at work, the women were spending time interacting. The Hmong men also refused to change more that the women did. This shift of power caused a lot of changes in Hmong households. What even caused more of a power shift was the fact that the Hmong children learned about the culture easier than the women did. Instead of the father having control over the family like it was back in Southeast Asia, the children now had the upper edge. The children could communicate, interact and even drive with Americans. You could see a 16-year-old Hmong

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

What do you think of traditional Hmong birth practices (pp. 3-5)? Compare them to the techniques used when Lia was born (p. 7). How do Hmong and American birth practices differ?

Firstly, increasing one’s cultural competence is instrumental to becoming a more empathic and understanding person and teacher. Cultural competence involves understanding another person’s culture without judgement and realizing that even if their ideas or beliefs are different, that does not mean they are wrong. If one learns about their students’ cultures and backgrounds, they will be able to speak and interact with these students in an appropriate way. If the students are refugees and come from a traumatic past, teachers should approach any personal questions they have sensitively. Sometimes people have prejudices or believe stereotypes and they may not even realize it. The Hmong people were widely dispersed and no two Hmong people will be the same. It is crucial that teachers do not assume that each person has the same values and

In my placement facility we provide services to immigrant and refugee families. This is my first experience with large numbers of people who speak little if any English, and have a far different culture than my own. Had it not been for my brief introduction to “Cultural Competency” I would have been ill equipped to respond in an understanding, and caring manner. Where in the past I may have attempted to communicate, found the process difficult and stopped the interaction, I have become motivated to find common ground, ask for assistance and help in any small way I may be

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 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.

Lia Lee was a Hmong infant born with epilepsy. Lia’s parents were immigrants to a Western nation. However, the parents held tightly onto traditional beliefs from their native country. The incongruent belief structure of the East and West created difficulty when the two systems collided in an effort to care for Lia Lee. Specifically, when the drug therapy prescribed for Lia Lee was not followed by her parents. Subsequently the child’s medical team contacted child services, which lead to Lia’s removal from her family. The result of the cultural misunderstanding was fragmented family. In addition to fueling the distrust of the western healthcare system by an already marginalized community.

I absolutely believe that the author was evenhanded in her presentation of the two cultures. Throughout the book it was clear that she tried to look at everything from as many perspectives as possible to accurately portray the Hmong culture and medical culture.

The Hmongs are an ethnic race, originally migrated from Eurasia and settled in river plains of China. The Chinese hated them, calling them ‘Miao’ or ‘Meo’ meaning barbarians and tried to gain mastery over them but the Hmongs wanting to be left alone began to migrate. By the beginning of the 19th century, half a million Hmongs had migrated to Indo-China. Disliking persecution, some settled in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. They detest being ordered or bullied, do not like to lose, are fighters who would rather die than surrender. Though they never possessed a country of their own, they have marched through the pages of history as free men desiring personal liberty. The Lee family travelled to Merced, California along with other Hmongs who fled to Laos in 1975, when their country became a prey to communism.

Foua reveals her longing for her former life in Laos to Fadiman because she felt she had more freedom there. In chapter nine, the author discusses the celebration Lia’s parents have in honor of her return home. The celebration includes the sacrificing of a cow. Due to their rituals, the Hmong community are often scrutinized because of their inclination towards animal sacrifice. After a few weeks of Lia being home her family realize her mental activity has slowed down which causes them to seek expensive Hmong remedies.

The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi W. Durrow is a compelling work of fiction, based on a true story which the author chose to write about. Right from the start, I found the premise to be quite gripping and it drew me into the novel. The trigger event, which is the tragic incident involving Rachel Morse’s mother and siblings, is unimaginably appalling. Rachel is the sole survivor of a family tragedy when they all fall off the roof of their building. Rachel’s mother had taken them up there and had proposed the idea.

To start off, I didn’t particularly enjoy the book. I found that the protagonist, Marion, seemed to drift throughout life being acting upon, rather than acting himself, while simultaneously blaming everything that seemed to go wrong with his life on someone else. On the other hand, it’s important to realize that no one lives in a bubble; who we are and what we do is influenced by others, and we exert our own influence on the world. Nonetheless, I think this irked me because I believe part of being able a physician is owning up to who you are, and what you stand for— “wearing your slippers” as Ghosh might say (Verghese 351). I didn’t feel like Marion did that.

Jordan. She also helps the reader to understand the fascination and fear of medicine through the use of explaining Grace Mark’s thoughts. Atwood’s underlying motif of anxiety concerning the medical field helps to create complex characters and an accurate sense of timing.