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

With the loud noise of a slamming door the family believed that Lia’s spirit had been frightened and left the body causing the sickness she was experiencing. The family saw the seizures as an illness of some distinction. In the Hmong culture epileptics often become shamans. The chapter goes on to tell the child’s story about multiple trips to the Hospital Emergency Room. It speaks about the lack of communication surrounding the child’s symptoms. The family is unable, and the medical team unaware of the lack of communication about medical dosages. The doctors have no idea about parental refusal to give certain medicines due to mistrust, misunderstandings, and behavioral side effects. The doctors do not attempt to develop more empathy with the traditional Hmong lifestyle or try to learn more about the Hmong culture. The dichotomy between the Hmong's perceived spiritual factors and the Americans' perceived scientific factors comprises the overall theme.

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.

This applied theory paper will analyze both the macro and micro analysis of the Novel, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman (Fadiman, 1997). In the book “The Spirit Catches You and Falls Down”, the character Lia illness resulted in a cultural divide between the Hmong culture and the American culture. Throughout this paper both the conflict theory and the family systems theory will be used to examine themes of behaviors among the characters in the text. The family and medical team use the applications of a number of different social work theories to navigate through her illness implementing a number of different strategies to nurse her to health. The author Fadiman explores the Lee’s family

The book, The spirit Catches you as you Fall Down by Anne Fadiman follows the life of a Hmong family living in the city of Merced California after fleeing their home in Laos due to persecution. The main focus of the book is a little girl named Lia Lee who suffers tragedy in her life at a very young age. The book illustrates the differences between the healing methods, or medical procedures between the western culture and the Hmong culture, and how if affected Lia and her family as she grew up. The book goes into great detail when it comes to the cultural differences and the hegemony from one culture to the other.

In this book written by Anne Fadiman in 1997, Fadiman tells the story of a Hmong family from Sainyabuli province Asia. The Lee’s family’s story is one filled with perseverance and mishap. With majority of the book being about Lia Lee, a child with epilepsy. Thought to be caused because of her younger sister slamming a door which released her soul from her body. Leading to the onslaught of problems between the Lee’s family and western medicine. Fadiman discusses these problems in the book as cross-cultural misunderstandings where the Lee’s family and the doctors would miscommunicate impacting Lia, and her treatments. Overall “ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” discusses many elements mainly of cultural collision, cultural collision, and immigration struggles.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a story about the Lee family and their daughter Lia who was suffering from seizures. The Lee family was the minority in this situation and the government affected the Lee family by not having cross-cultural programs in use, however because of what the Lee family went through they ended up affecting the government by becoming an inspiration for the implementation of cross-cultural programs.

“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.

Connect to what you feel, allow your senses to guide you, let the strong memories wash over you and simply give up resistance to maintaining your countenance.

So far, I have learned that regardless of the Hmong cultural beliefs and difficulties they love their daughter. Everything is knew for them, different country, and culture, which makes it more difficult for them to adjust. They caring and loving people because had the courage to introduce a stranger to their home. It must be very hard for the Foua and Nao Kao to follow the doctor’s rule because their cultural beliefs are really strong. Although they are doing their best to make things smooth and help their daughter. Coming from a different country where people have live most of their life it is very had to fit in. Everything is different and at times you get frustraid because you are away from your whole family.

Minuchin states that “a family is an open social and cultural system that reacts and adapts to the demands placed on it through what is known as transactional patterns of behavior. These transactional patterns define how family members interact and create patterns that demonstrate when, how, and with whom they relate” (GCU, 2011). Functional family adapts to the stressful situation and starts functioning properly with

Murray Bowen developed a new theory that focuses on how the family’s emotions and interactions as a unit can affect the individual and vice versa. (Marianne Schneider 2015) In this theory patterns are constructed in the family to ease the stress created in families. (Baege. M. 2005) The Family Systems theory proposes that to get a better look inside what’s going on with the individual you must look at the family.

Families go through many struggles and each family has their own way of dealing with them. In Gabriela García Márquez’s book, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Buendía family goes through major ups and downs. The family’s reactions to these events is perfect for examining through the family stress theory. The family stress theory explores why families break apart or stay together. By examining the Buendías’ reactions to the events they go through, one can determine whether the Buendías are prone to falling apart or coming together when faced with adversity.