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Book Report: “The Spirit catches you and you fall Down”
The book “The Spirit catches you and you fall Down” is an objective narration of the struggles and challenges a family faces in the process of identifying with a new culture in modern life. To capture this significant experience, Anne Fadiman gives a chronicle of the experiences that the Lee family faced when trying to integrate into the American culture in Merced, California. The book presents the differences in culture between the two societies and how they contribute towards the challenges of social cohesion. Through the narration, Fadiman shows the dangers of cultural differences, especially when a culture clashes with doctors on matters of health. The story of a young Lee is well presented in the novel that this paper reports on.
The story of the Lia family and the ailing child is based on their understanding of two cultures, their Chinese culture and the American culture. According to the Hmong tradition of the lee family, the mother, Houla gave birth to twelve children in a residence built of native materials. The family had healthy family, probably because of believing in the powers of txiv neeb. To the Hmong, txiv neeb is a religious power believed to take care of the sick souls of the Chinese families (Konner, 1997). According to the Hmong tradition, the healing of a family member takes place when the txiv neeb powers fly and frees a soul from the detention of a bad spirit they called the dab. With this believe, their platform was set for a clash of their tradition with the American treatment led by science.
The story of lee begins at her tender age of three months when she gets her first seizure resulting from epilepsy. As an epileptic child, Lee faces several seizures for the following moths which included three visits to the emergency room for medical attention (Fadiman, 1997). The story of her ill epileptic condition takes a turn in the novel when her parents decided not to take attention of the doctor’s instructions. In particular, lee’s parents give her the doctor’s medication inconsistently and finally avoid giving her the treatment (Konner, 1997). However, at first, they seemed to cooperate with the doctors, but after some time, their cultural opposition of the western medicine became dominant, consequently they refused to give the young lee the prescribed medication.
From a cultural perspective, parents love their children and they would do anything to keep them safe. This was the case in the story as they always sought to give her the best according to their judgment; in this case, traditional healing (Fox, 2005). Consequently, after a series of seizures, it was clear that the family did not follow the orders of the doctor. Their focus was on the connection with lee’s seizure with the healing powers of the txiv neeb (The Book Rags, n.d). Despite avoiding the doctor’s instructions, it was clear that they loved their child. This angered the American doctors, with one doctor taking a legal action. He went to court and got an order to that authorized taking away of the young lee for medical attention.
This shows that in the case of cultural clashes; there is a need for people to take decisive actions that are meant to bring greater good to the society. Despite the resistance from the parents, the doctor takes an ethical decision to help take good medical care of the epileptic lee. However, such actions do not guarantee health or show the superiority of one culture over the other. When she is returned home, the parents change their attitude and comply with doctors (Konner, 1997). However, she continues to experience seizures that are now accompanied by a new bacterial infection. It is unfortunate that she further experiences brain damage when she is returned to the parents, who were expecting her healing.
Ultimate misunderstanding is the ethical description of these events that befall the young lee in relation to the parents against the doctors. According to Fox (2005), such misunderstandings arise from cultural differences that dominate and seek to get extremely different interpretations of a situation that seems to be mysterious. The case of the young lee was mysterious, especially when she suffered her worst seizure, at the age of four years. This time, even the doctor who was treating her could not do anything, as he proposed transferring her to another doctor (The Book Rags, n.d). To shock the doctors, who believed she would die; lee went on to live in a vegetative state for twenty six years, when she died of pneumonia in California (Fadiman, 1997).
By using Lia’s family, Fadiman presents the differences between the American culture and the Hmong culture. The book exposes the need for more dialogue on the integration of cultures through awareness of the role of modern medicine. Unlike the Hmong who perceive the conditions of their patients from a religious angle, modern doctors view it as a medical situation that requires medical attention. Moreover, the differences in culture would be avoided by enhancing the understanding of different practices based on culture. This perspective of exposing the community makes the book a significant tool of expressing the world as seen from different angles.
References
Fadiman, A. (1997). The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Macmillan
Fox, R. C. (2005). “Cultural Competence and the Culture of Medicine.” New England Journal of Medicine. 2005; 353:1316-1319
Konner, M. (1997). Take Only as Directed:When medicine butts up against traditional belief, tragedy ensues. Retrieve From, <http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/10/19/reviews/971019.19konnert.html> June 7, 2014
The Book Rags. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down Study Guide. Retrieve From, <http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-spirit-catches-you-and-you-fall-down> June 7, 2014