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The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down Summary

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Anne Fadiman explores the delicate nature of cross-cultural medical care in her book “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall down,” a title taken from the Hmong phrase “qaug dab peg,” an interpretation for epilepsy and its spiritual connections with the evil spirit (“dab”). Through her deep dive into the world of the Hmong people and their interactions with American medicine, her research combined with the personal story of the Lee family and their experience navigating the complicated system of eastern medicine, exposes the difficulties that so often occur when two very different cultures approach healthcare.
Fadiman follows the Lees, an immigrant family who relocated to Merced, CA after conflict in Laos forced them out of their home. The book …show more content…
The Lees do not speak English. Lia is misdiagnosed several times at the beginning of her seizures because the family was unable to explain the symptoms once arriving to the hospital after the episode had stopped. But Fadiman, after researching both the Hmong as a people, as well as the Lees personally, makes it clear that the issue is much more than a lack of proper translation. The Hmong people are known for their unwillingness to compromise. Their history shows that from the Hmong perspective, they are more likely to commit suicide than surrender (which Fadiman portrays through other Hmong anecdotes, highlighting medical cases similar to Lia’s). They are a people that have chosen death before submission for thousands of years. Lia’s case was not just about the Lees as a single family, but worked to represent an entire group of people with a distinguished attitude toward life, built into their most basic existence. Fadiman presents their unwillingness to give into other ways of life as an inborn trait, not a lack of education or misunderstanding of Western ways. This disdain for assimilation is ultimately what allowed the Hmong to exist for thousands of years without giving in to an unwanted cultural

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