The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the tragic story of a young Hmong girl named Lia who suffers from epilepsy and who was the victim of a cultural collision and misunderstanding between her Hmong parents and her American doctors in Merced, California. The story follows Lia’s family, the Lees, as they navigate the American culture and system while maintaining strong ties with their traditions, practices, and rituals. The author, Anne Fadiman, uses the battle between the doctors of Merced and Lia’s parents as a way of emphasizing that doctors, and people in general, need to be more sensitive to the various aspects of different cultures and that not doing so can result in cultural misunderstandings and conflicts. With that being said,
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Nao Kao and Foua Lee have battled communists alongside the US, traveled across countries, and risked their lives to protect their family. Little did they know that the obstacles and challenges aren’t over yet. With their arrival to the US comes the inevitable culture shock and they had to deal with prejudice, getting their culture mocked and their intelligence insulted. The Lee’s first culture shock experience was probably when Lia’s placenta was incinerated. In Hmong culture, the placenta is extremely important to the soul. After the baby is born, their placenta is buried under the parents’ bed if it’s a girl and near the base of the house if it’s a boy. After death, the Hmong believe that the soul floats around from a place to another until it finds the place where the placenta is buried. To have the placenta incinerated came as a shock the Lia’s parents who thought that the the soul of Lia, if it can’t find the placenta, is condemned to an eternity of wandering, naked and alone. Nao Kao and Foua Lee also believe that the souls of all their family will have a tremendous journey to undertake to find their jackets, another term for the placenta, as they are not sure if their house is still standing back in Laos and whether the jackets …show more content…
Lia’s family has always had little to no power throughout their history. They fled their country looking for safety and better opportunities. Their history, their culture, and their background made them very rigid in exerting their power. Back in Laos, the Lees were free to follow and practice their own culture without any prejudice or judgement from anyone in the community and without any laws prohibiting them from doing so. Their power and freedom were respected back in Laos. "What I miss in Laos is that free spirit, doing what you want to do [...] I miss that feeling of freeness. I miss having something that really belongs to me." (Anne Fadiman, p. 27) However, with their relocation to the US, that freedom is now limited and regulated by laws. In America, the Hmong are forced to abide by their new home's bureaucratic nature. And after facing war, forced migration, and violence, there's nothing that the Hmong hate more than bureaucrats. Given that they live in a country that gives them few opportunities and that looks down on them, they yearn for some sort of power. Furthermore, since they can’t perform the rituals and healing ceremonies that would normally give them a sense of power over Lia’s condition, they blamed the ones with power that they don’t have: the doctors. In addition to that, the fact that the
Nao Kao and Foua Lee have battled communists alongside the US, traveled across countries, and risked their lives to protect their family. Little did they know that the obstacles and challenges aren’t over yet. With their arrival to the US comes the inevitable culture shock and they had to deal with prejudice, getting their culture mocked and their intelligence insulted. The Lee’s first culture shock experience was probably when Lia’s placenta was incinerated. In Hmong culture, the placenta is extremely important to the soul. After the baby is born, their placenta is buried under the parents’ bed if it’s a girl and near the base of the house if it’s a boy. After death, the Hmong believe that the soul floats around from a place to another until it finds the place where the placenta is buried. To have the placenta incinerated came as a shock the Lia’s parents who thought that the the soul of Lia, if it can’t find the placenta, is condemned to an eternity of wandering, naked and alone. Nao Kao and Foua Lee also believe that the souls of all their family will have a tremendous journey to undertake to find their jackets, another term for the placenta, as they are not sure if their house is still standing back in Laos and whether the jackets …show more content…
Lia’s family has always had little to no power throughout their history. They fled their country looking for safety and better opportunities. Their history, their culture, and their background made them very rigid in exerting their power. Back in Laos, the Lees were free to follow and practice their own culture without any prejudice or judgement from anyone in the community and without any laws prohibiting them from doing so. Their power and freedom were respected back in Laos. "What I miss in Laos is that free spirit, doing what you want to do [...] I miss that feeling of freeness. I miss having something that really belongs to me." (Anne Fadiman, p. 27) However, with their relocation to the US, that freedom is now limited and regulated by laws. In America, the Hmong are forced to abide by their new home's bureaucratic nature. And after facing war, forced migration, and violence, there's nothing that the Hmong hate more than bureaucrats. Given that they live in a country that gives them few opportunities and that looks down on them, they yearn for some sort of power. Furthermore, since they can’t perform the rituals and healing ceremonies that would normally give them a sense of power over Lia’s condition, they blamed the ones with power that they don’t have: the doctors. In addition to that, the fact that the