CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Cultural Differences

Cultural Differences

Book Review of “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”

"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” provides an education in Hmong history and American medicine, a gripping family drama, and a new outlook on the world.

The book "The Spirit Catches You and you Fall Down" is written by Anne Fadiman. Anne Fadiman is an American author, editor and teacher.

Anne Fadiman is the Francis Writer-in-Residence at Yale. Her first book, “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”, is an account of the unbridgeable gulf between a family of Hmong refugees and their American doctors. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, among other awards. Fadiman is also the author of two essay collections. The London Observer called Ex Libris "witty, enchanting, and supremely well-written." NPR said of At Large and At Small, "Fadiman is utterly delightful, witty and curious, and she is such a stellar writer that if she wrote about pencil shavings, you'd read it aloud to all your friends."

The book is about a girl named Lia Lee who was a poignant example that emphasizes the cultural barriers between modern and traditional cultures through their approaches to the life, which results in complete destruction of her brain.

"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down'' by Anne Fadiman represents true story of the epileptic Hmong girl and her family displaced from China to the USA. She suffers severe grand mal seizures and eventually becomes vegetative for the rest of her life. Lia Lee's story was a poignant example that emphasizes the cultural barriers between modern and traditional cultures through their approaches to the life, which results in complete destruction of her brain. The Lees favored traditional treatment that conflicted with the doctors' treatment by medications. Through conscious ignorance of the proper combined treatment and presumed compliance, it becomes the basis of a tug-of-war for Lia's life between her doctors and her parents resulting in Lia's vegetative state. Fadiman uses this conflict as the reflection of the conflict between Western and Eastern medicine and inability to find a compromise in general due to the cultural differences. The author succeeded to represent colliding of the cultures through the characters such as Dang Moua and in the same time to represent primitive culture, unable to compromise, through Foua and Nao Kao. Lia's condition signifies the result of the conflict and inability to understand different cultures and their customs and tradition.

This book highlights a serious issue very efficiently using a true story. A true depiction of cultural difference is made in this book. Anne Fadiman has put in all her efforts and really proved herself as the most innovative and creative writer.

"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" is the riveting narrative of a showdown between modern American medicine and ancient Hmong beliefs, a blow-by-blow account of the battle fought over the body and soul of a very sick young girl. Anne Fadiman's thorough, compassionate, and scrupulously fair presentation of Lia Lee's story provides a balanced ...