The spirit catches you and you fall down characters. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman Plot Summary 2023-01-03
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a book by Anne Fadiman that tells the story of a Hmong family and their experience with the healthcare system in the United States. The book follows the lives of Lia Lee, a young Hmong girl who suffers from epilepsy, and her parents, Foua and Nao Kao.
Lia Lee is the central character of the book and serves as a symbol of the cultural divide between the Hmong and Western society. Lia is a bright and curious child who is deeply connected to her cultural traditions and beliefs. However, her epilepsy causes her to suffer frequent seizures, which leads her parents to seek medical treatment for her in the United States.
Foua and Nao Kao are Lia's parents and are devout followers of Hmong tradition. They are deeply attached to their cultural beliefs and practices, and they struggle to understand the Western medical system and its approach to treatment. Despite their efforts to understand and comply with Western medical practices, they often find themselves at odds with the healthcare system and its practitioners, leading to conflicts and misunderstandings.
Dr. Neil Ernst is a pediatrician who is tasked with treating Lia and helping her parents navigate the healthcare system. Despite his best efforts, he struggles to understand the Hmong culture and its traditional beliefs about illness and treatment. He is frustrated by the cultural differences and the lack of communication between the Hmong family and the medical professionals.
Anne Fadiman, the author of the book, serves as a mediator between the Hmong family and the Western medical system. She acts as a translator and cultural intermediary, helping to bridge the gap between the two cultures and facilitate understanding and communication.
Overall, the characters in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down represent the complex and often strained relationship between different cultures and their approaches to healthcare. The book highlights the importance of cultural competence and understanding in the healthcare system and the challenges that can arise when these are lacking.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Characters
Her father was a famous tvix neeb and a soldier who had trained with the CIA. Eventually, on her third visit, Lia arrives while still seizing. The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down examines the ways in which people cling to various strongly-held tenets set forth by their cultures. Nao Kao and Foua welcome them into their home, considering her a friend and ally, sharing their culture and family stories with her. The favorable news of the region spread, and eventually as many as one in five Merced residents were Hmong. Gary Thueson, a family practice resident who did the delivery, noted in the chart that in order to speed the labor, he had artificially ruptured Foua's amniotic sac by poking it with a foot-long plastic "amni-hook"; that no anesthesia was used; that no episiotomy, an incision to enlarge the vaginal opening, was necessary; and that after the birth, Foua received a standard intravenous dose of Pitocin to constrict her uterus. Although the Hmong believe that illness can be caused by a variety of sources--including eating the wrong food, drinking contaminated water, being affected by a change in the weather, failing to ejaculate completely during sexual intercourse, neglecting to make offerings to one's ancestors, being punished for one's ancestors' transgressions, being cursed, being hit by a whirlwind, having a stone implanted in one's body by an evil spirit master, having one's blood sucked by a dab, bumping into a dab who lives in a tree or a stream, digging a well in a dab's living place, catching sight of a dwarf female dab who eats earthworms, having a dab sit on one's chest while one is sleeping, doing one's laundry in a lake inhabited by a dragon, pointing one's finger at the full moon, touching a newborn mouse, killing a large snake, urinating on a rock that looks like a tiger, urinating on or kicking a benevolent house spirit, or having bird droppings fall on one's head--by far the most common cause of illness is soul loss.
Neil Ernst Character Analysis in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Conquergood was successful at designing an environmental health program where most others had failed. For safety reasons, many Hmong became refugees, often filtering through refugee camps in Thailand before—if they were lucky—arriving in America in the mid 1970s. Her humility and unorthodox methods earn her the trust of many Hmong patients. Dang Moua The first Hmong to relocate to Merced, CA, paving the way for many others to follow. Calling Lia a vegetable was, it seemed to me, just one more form of avoidance.
‎The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Study Guide on Apple Books
Neil Ernst Character Analysis One of Lia's primary doctors along with his wife, Peggy Philp at Merced Community Medical Center. The limited contact the Hmong had already had with Western medicine in the camp hospitals and clinics had done little to instill confidence, especially when compared to the experiences with shamanistic healing to which they were accustomed. When Lia Lee was released from MCMC, at the age of three days, her mother was asked to sign a piece of paper that read: I CERTIFY that during the discharge procedure I received my baby, examined it and determined that it was mine. A handful of times, Neil gave Foua a hug while Lia was seizing, but most of the time, while Lia was between the ages of eighteen months and three and a half years, he was too angry to feel much sympathy toward either of her parents. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Eric Crystal Eric Crystal is an anthropologist who studies the Hmong American community in Merced, California.
This was probably either tea or beef broth; Foua is sure it wasn't coffee, which she had seen before and would have recognized. Lia is not a doll. As a result, she was placed in foster care for one year in order to ensure she would receive the recommended medicines. A long or arduous labor could be eased by drinking the water in which a key had been boiled, in order to unlock the birth canal; by having her family array bowls of sacred water around the room and chant prayers over them; or, if the difficulty stemmed from having treated an elder member of the family with insufficient respect, by washing the offended relative's fingertips and apologizing like crazy until the relative finally said, "I forgive you. At three months of age Lia experiencing her first major seizure The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman Essay The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is about the cross-cultural ethics in medicine. Buy Study Guide Lia Lee The epileptic child whose tragic story illustrates the cultural divide between the Hmong and the American medical systems. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down documents the struggles of the Lees, a family of Hmong refugees who live in sunny Merced, California.
And the other thing that was different between them and me was that they seemed to accept things that to me were major catastrophes as part of the normal flow of life. Based on this information, he moved his family to California, where he found work picking peaches and figs and supplemented his diet by trapping small animals. As previously mentioned, the Hmong attitude toward Western medicine is one of relative skepticism. Whereas Hmongs believe that medical concerns are intertwined with almost all elements of life, mainstream American medicine has divided health into categories of medical study. Dan Murphy The family practice resident on call the third time the Lees brought Lia to the emergency room at MCMC.
As an adult May pursues a career in health sciences because of her family's experience in the health-care system. Foua Yang and Nao Kao Lee Lia's parents. Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux edition of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down published in 2012. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-ru. .
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman Plot Summary
May Ying Xiong Fadiman's "cultural broker," who taught her what to do among the Hmong as well as translate what people said. On this occasion, she thought the doctor was gentle and kind, she was impressed that so many people were there to help her, and although she felt that the nurses who bathed Lia with Safeguard did not get her quite as clean as she had gotten her newborns with Laotian stream water, her only major complaint concerned the hospital food. He tells Fadiman, whom he introduces to the Lee family, that he dreams of creating Hmongtown, a section of Merced devoted to Hmong culture and living. Small children were rarely abused; it was believed that a dab who witnessed mistreatment might take the child, assuming it was not wanted. Whereas in Laos they had been free to follow their culture and to live independently, in the United States their freedom was curtailed.
Cultural Values, Spirituality, and Medicine Theme in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Unfortunately, though, Lia arrives in Fresno in the middle of yet another violent grand mal seizure, her lips and nailbeds blue, her arms and legs stiffly thrashing. At the same time, she was very affectionate and extremely well loved. He's a skilled, disciplined physician admired by the other staff members. Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Farrar, Straus, and Giroux edition of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down published in 2012. Everything is a spiritual problem.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Study Guide
To be honest, everyone is a little biased. Fadiman's father is The New Yorker, she figured she might as well upgrade to a full-blown book. Anne Fadiman, the daughter of Annalee Whitmore Jacoby Fadiman, a screenwriter and foreign correspondent, and Clifton Fadiman, an essayist and critic, was born in New York City in 1953. A decade ago, that is not the way Neil looked at the situation. An author named Anne Fadiman documented this case and tried to untangle what exactly went wrong with the situation. However, the Hmong preferred him as he respected their desire to make their own choices about their bodies.
