Tradition is defined in the dictionary as the handing down from generation to generation of the same customs and beliefs. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, I believe has two main topics addressed: the traditions of the Hmong people, and the dangers of being unable to communicate. The misunderstanding of these two consequential points, I believe caused the majority of conflict that arose.
Can tradition prevent open-mindedness? Lia's parents reasoning of her seizures as "not so much a medical problem as a blessing", I think helped them have the ability to cope. However, I believe that it also got in the way of proper treatment and caused severity of her medical condition in increase.
I have learned that tradition can be a magnificent bestowal, however one must be aware and still maintain an unbiased realization that other alternatives exist.
Rumors can cause reification if not clarified. The canards the Hmong people had heard about the United States and the medical practices had been the origin of some of the conflict. This chapter lead me to ponder the obscure rumors I had heard, and to consider how they had impacted my views, mindset, and even influenced decisions.
The example of Conquergood's success working with medical treatments in the Hmong community was inspiring, and taught me that by being knowledgeable and sensible of another's culture can help make large progress.
In my life I have seen how even while speaking the same language there can be communication problems. Adding the inability to speck the same language and then the complexity of describing medical conditions, I can see how the situation could turn out poorly and cause troubling effects. This chapter has helped me better understand why the Hmon...
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...iguing and gruesome at the same time. My entire life I have been blessed with the ability to invasion the scenes of a book and be able to have a mental picture of the events. While reading this passage, I had a difficult time because I could visualize the gory depictions described. While I respect the rights to practice ones own beliefs, I find it hard to comprehend being able to witness the animal sacrifice. While I respect Lees view and beliefs, I feel as though the rituals surrounding their beliefs are superstitious.
I thought the remark you made was profound convening whither it was symbolic or the real thing, when you said "....to a devout Roman Catholic, the bread and wine are not a symbol of Christ's body and blood but the real thing". This leads me to believe that just like the Catholics, the Hmongs believe that their ceremonies are the "real thing" as well.
One of the most important aspects of Hmong culture is the group and family dynamic. The Hmong considered farming their most important duty because it was a major source of income when they were in Laos. The story regarding the Hmong family who attempted to grow vegetables inside their second story apartment was an example of this (Fadiman, 1997, p. 226). The Hmong found the transition difficult since the thing they knew best, farming, was taken away from them. Thus, they were forced to fit into roles that were foreign to them.
Within this critical analysis, I hope to show that the lack of communication and compromise between the Hmong family and the American doctors, was the defining blow to Lia’s ill health. I hope to do this by addressing the following three main points of interest in relation to this miscommunication; the views held by the American healthcare professions on the causes of Lia’s illness, contrasted with the opinions of Lia’s parents. I will then discuss the health-seeking strategies of Lia’s parents and how they were influenced by different resou...
The two items that I will be discussing are questions one and two. Looking at the Lee family from a psycho-social perspective, I would say that they are a very close nit family who value their culture. The wife, Foua is very independent in the sense that she gave birth to all of her children except Lia, without any help or assistance from anyone. Also because she worked in the fields all through her pregnancies. The husband, Nao Kao is a very loving, and supporting to his wife and children. The Lee’s value their beliefs and believe strongly in their customs. They possess close nit ties to other Hmong people and although they were taught their own healing remedies, they are somewhat accepting of western customs as well.
It is important to consider that the Hmong had their own way of spiritual beliefs and religious healing practices. However, after the community decided to exclude Lia from the applications and advantages of modern medicine, the condition of the young girl worsened (Parish, 2004, p. 131). It was not at all wrong to humanize medicine, but apparently, as a multi-cultural community, the Hmong people became too ignorant and indignant over the applications and benefits of modern medicine applications. Staying firm over their religious affiliations and conduct, the maximum effect of healing became misaligned and ineffective. This was the misunderstanding that should be cleared in the story. There would have been probable results if the Hmong community chose to collaborate with the modern society without needing to disregard or compromise their own values and religious affiliations and
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 in Merced, California, which was home to the largest population of Hmong refugees, such as the Lee family, from Laos who suffered mass confusion when trying to navigate the American health care system. Because the Hmong could not speak sufficient English until the children gained language skills native to the United States, residents of California were not accepting of the Hmong community. Fadiman aims to better understand how knowledge of illness among Hmong and Western medical practitioners differ, which pushes the reader to understand how the complicate medical treatment in the past as well as the present from a perspective of an American observing a Hmong family's struggle with the system. In America, it isn’t uncommon to be judged for your clothing, your house, or the amount of money your family makes, so it is easy to believe that the Hmong people were not easily accepted into American society. As a whole, ethnocentrism, or the tendency to believe that one's culture is superior to another, is one of America's weaknesses and this account proves ethnocentric behavior was prominent even in the 1970-80's when Fadiman was in the process of doing her fieldwork in post-Vietnam War Era California.
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 to as qaug dab peg (translated in English, "the spirit catches you and you fall down"), in which epileptic attacks are perceived as evidence of the epileptic's ability to enter and journey momentarily into the spirit realm (Wikipedia, 2014)
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
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
Our traditions act as a compass for our human relationships and personal interactions, the qualitative experiences of our family life, and ultimately, the development of societies. As we honor traditions, so we learn to honor ourselves and each other. The poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost and the story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson both contain examples of seemingly senseless traditions. The thought of people doing something senselessly, just to appease the continuance of something that was done by their forefathers seems foolish unless there is some sort of positive result from their actions. The question is what results are positive enough to go through the effort. This means that as time progresses some traditions deserve to fade while others deserve to stay bright even though the reason why may not always be evident.
We all have traditions in our lives, but most of them vary between us. Where we are the same is that we have a genetic history of traditions. So what defines a tradition? A way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, culture, etc., for a long time. An inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior. Also a belief or story or a relating to the past that are commonly accepted. This information should help us to understand that we are more tradition oriented that we think. Since the beginning of time there have been traditions that exists in our genetic makeup. From the mammals, animals, and fish that migrate every year to humans celebrating the changing of the seasons or making sacrifices to their Gods. They all are traditions that are followed year to year and generation to generation, most altering only slightly through the years. This helps to establish a tradition of traditions in all species.
The goal of this lesson is to explore how we can improve communication to eliminate language barriers between healthcare providers and patients in our organization and to establish culturally and linguistically appropriate goals, that provide safe, equal, and quality care to all our clients regardless of race, ethnic, or socioeconomic status. At the end of this lesson we should be
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
There is considerable evidence of the Lee’s having both low print and oral literacy. The Lee’s spoke very little English; they also were illiterate in both English and Hmong (Faidman, 1997). Another contributing factor to their health literacy was their beliefs about medicine. Because of the dissonance between the Lee’s beliefs and the American medical system, it was unclear if the Lee’s fully understood the cause of Lia’s epilepsy or the purpose of her prescribed medication. Their motivation to learn may also have been a factor; they believed they already knew what caused Lia’s epilepsy and what healing she needed. Faidman describes cases of successfully communicating western medical ideals with Hmong people, but Lia’s case is not an example of effective cross-cultural understanding. The Lee’s low level of health literacy severely impacted their ability to successfully understand and administer Lia’s medication, which may have negatively affected her health outcomes. Some strategies to improve communication suggested by Egbert and Nanna (2009) that may have helped the Lee’s include using plain language that is culturally sensitive, spending more time with the patient to ensure understanding, and using a, “...teach-back method, in which patients repeat back to the provider the information they believe they have just
Traditions are important in any family because they help to pass down knowledge, material objects,
In the United States today, a nurse is more likely to encounter patients who speak a language that is different from their own. This kind of intercultural difference poses a formidable communication challenge, as one’s ability to communicate will depend on whether one can understand one another's verbal and nonverbal codes (Jandt, 2012).