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, Hmong and American. Throughout the novel she takes us on a rollercoaster of a journey as problems arise due to many barriers that naturally occur when collaborating two very divergent ways of life. Unfortunately the journey she takes us on does not come with a happy ending as we all expect. the edifying friction between the young girl’s parents and her doctors caused her to wasted away because of medical conditions, epilepsy and septic shock, which could have been treatable. Nevertheless, although Fadiman’s book depicts an unambiguous state of affairs, it is an eye opener to the nuisance of cultural conflict that can be practical to all circumstances and can be utilized by all nurses to provide cultural competent care.
Ethnocentrism is defined as judging a different culture exclusively by the principles and values of one’s own customs. This is one o the major problems that the Lee family faced while being treated….. Before reading this novel, I had no idea what Hmong culture was or that it even existed, as I’m sure that was the same case with many of the health care team. The tragedy in the novel stems from the lack of awareness to the Hmong culture and the opposing beliefs of treatment between the medical staff and the Le...
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...nding my awareness to the cultures around me. Throughout this course I have learned many things about cultures that are recognizable to me, but I can defiantly say I have a different perspective on many cultures now. this book in particular, has opened my eyes to a culture I had no idea existed. The ways and traditions of the Hmong people, to me, is something I would expect to read about in a book about people from hundreds of years ago. Nevertheless, Fadiman had granted me the knowledge I need to know if I am ever faced with a Hmong patient, and for that I am grateful.
Fadiman writes a tragic tale about poor little Lisa
Between the two cultures impacts the health and illness corse of Lisa Lee and her whole entire family.
Furthermore, the Lee’s and the medical team both had two very distinct approaches to the treatment of Lisa’s condition. For example,
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's ethnic group or culture is superior (Leeder, 2004). In order to gain citizenship David Aldwinkle was subject to investigation by inspectors to prove he was culturally Japanese. These investigations included interviewing his neighbors,
The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman is a very interesting book. It’s amazing how difficult it is for Americans to understand other cultures because the United States is such a diverse country. However, as an American, I understood the frustrations that Lia Lee’s doctors’ felt when trying to diagnose and treat her properly. In this book both the American doctors and the Hmong peoples faced many hardships and barriers when trying to communicate with each other. After having read this book I can understand where both groups were coming from and reasons for their actions. I could only imagine the level of difficulty and anger that the doctors and Lia’s parents must have experienced over that time period.
The book I read to examine multicultural issues and 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 in the preface, “I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where the edges meet.” This statement would hold so much relevance because Lia’s treatments could have been less stressful if the two cultures reached a point of intersectionality. This is also congruent with what Tatum mentioned in Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria concerning, “Changes in immigration policy in 1965 dramatically increased Asian immigration, significantly altering the demographic makeup of the Asian Pacific American community.” In order to have a full
The Hmong people, an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam and Laos, greatly value their culture and traditions. The film “The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America” documents the seventeen year journey of the Hmong Shaman, Paja Thao and his family from the mountains of Laos to the heartland of America. This film shows the struggle of Paja Thao to maintain their 5000 year-old shamanic traditions as his children embrace the American culture. Moreover, the film shows that one of the major problems refugees like Paja Thao and his family face upon their arrival to the United States is conflict with the American medical system. Despite the dominant biomedical model of health, the film “The Split Horn” shows that
Throughout reading of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman one cannot help but notice the different themes that plays an integral role in understanding the book. This book is an intriguing read and Fadiman wrote in a cultural appropriation context and it was clear from the background give about the Hmong culture that I was an investigative research method type of book. Fadiman gave readers a clear insight about lives of the Hmong and how culture plays a vital role in how one perceives health (sickness) etc. Fadiman also highlighted both perspective of the patient and doctors concerning health issues.
This paper will be a book critique of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The book looked at the case of a Hmong family living in the United States whose daughter becomes ill and the medical, ethical, and cultural issues surrounding the case. The book will be discussed in terms of how some of these issues occurred. There will be discussion of the questions given associated with the book as well as the group discussion that occurred in class.
Going to a different country or area of the world can open up anybody’s eyes to see that culture makes a huge impact on the understanding and practices of healthcare that seem to be so common to other areas of the world. When a person lives in one country their whole life, that person may not realize how different the life they live is from someone in a foreign country. If a person is going to receive treatment from someone with a different cultural background, they should be expected to get treatment to respects their own culture. Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences having such a diverse variety of students has their own cultural competency definition that states “effectively and comfortably communicate across cultures with patients of differing backgrounds, taking into account aspects of trust in order to adopt mutually acceptable objectives and measures”. In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine Dettwyler, the issue of culture and healthcare are greatly prevalent. Katherine Dettwyler herself goes to West Africa as an anthropologist and her horizons are broadened when during her research she comes in contact with how much culture has an impact on healthcare and everyday life.
In the US., the therapeutic group seldom has approaches to correspond with individuals of societies so drastically unique in relation to standard American society; even a great interpreter will think that it troublesome deciphering ideas between the two separate societies' reality ideas. American specialists, not at all like Hmong shamans, regularly physically touch and cut into the collections of their patients and utilize an assortment of capable medications and meds.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down tells the story of a young Hmong girl stricken with epilepsy, her family, her doctors, and how misunderstandings between cultures can lead to tragedy. The title comes from the Hmong term for epilepsy, which translated, is “the spirit catches you and you fall down”. Anne Fadiman alternates between chapters on Hmong history or culture and chapters on the Lees, and specifically Lia. The condensed history of the Hmong portrayed here starts at their beginning, and traces their heritage, their movements, and why they do what they do as they flee from enemies to country to country. This record allows the reader to better understand the Lees and their situation without bogging him down with details that may
What would it be like to come to a country and not understand anything about its health care system? To many this would be a very daunting task. Unfortunately, this is the scenario that the Lee family has to deal with in the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The Lee family, and the other thousands of Hmong immigrants, try to understand and navigate the complex and sometimes confusing health care system of the United States. As the book points out, the values and ideals of the Hmong culture and the United States health care system are not always the same and sometimes come into great conflict with each other. Lia Lee was unfortunately the person stuck in the middle of this great conflict.
Fadiman, A. 1997. 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.
Traditional Hmong’s believe in their Shaman rather than western doctors, they choose to detain their treatment by hosting their rituals to save them. A shaman is “a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness, foretell the future, control spiritual forces, etc” (dictionary.com). Hmong individual’s have a belief that ancestral spirits, including the spirits of shamans, are reincarnated into the same family tree. Hmong consider being a shaman an honor because they carry the duty of helping mankind according to Hmong mythology. Differences between Hmong traditional beliefs and Western biomedical beliefs create a lack of understanding. Negative health care experiences result in Hmong community members’ mistrust and fear of Western medicine. However, when there’s mistrust between a doctor and a patient there could be lack of treatment because of the differences between our ...
As nurses entering the medical field understanding the culture of our patients is crucial to proper care. Each culture has their own set of beliefs and values that are shared among groups of people which influences personality, language, lifestyles, house hold, level modesty, social standings, foods, health treatment and identity. Culture affects how people view health and illness; dictating when, where and what type of medical treatment they will receive and who will be their care provider.
For example, in my past work experience, one of the Hispanic teen patient was admitted into the hospital for abdominal pain. During education on diet regimen, patient became upset because I was teaching him to avoid spicy foods, chilies, lemons, etc. and consume healthy diets. The patient replied “I’m Mexican, it doesn’t mean I eat spicy foods”. Another example, a Vietnamese adult patient did not sign a consent form and her surgery was on hold for three days. The patient requested to wait for her grandfather to arrive from overseas to consent for her. I understood that in Asian culture, high value is placed on the decision of elders, the role of eldest male or female in families, or roles and expectation of children within the family (Galanti, 2008, page 31-33).
Ethnocentrism is when a person judges a group by the standard of their own culture. Ethnocentrism come in many shapes and forms and takes place in all cultures. The example I found to be the best representation and explanation of ethnocentrism, was the TedTalk: Chimamanda Adichie The Danger of a single story. In her talk she relays times in her life where she thought all books had to have white British characters in them because she only read books, which had those types of characters. She also relayed the story of here first time in college where she had an American room mate who assumed she would have no idea how to do simple tasks like use a stove (Adichie). Ethnocentrism is like having a single story we see other cultures only as our culture