The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

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Summary: A Must Read
Review: This book is a must read. It is thought provoking, educational and hard to describe. I kept wanting to place judgement on the doctors, then I wanted to place judgement on The Hmong families, when really there was no judgement to be placed. This book is about cultural issues that impacts many lives. I liked the fact that Anne Fadiman didn't seem to have an agenda, she told the facts as they happened and as she saw it, without her own prejudices. With so much prejudice in our society I think this book might help us each be a little more tolerant.

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Summary: spirit catches you and u..
Review: came in good condition, i bought it for a class really but its a good book anyway

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Summary: This is a fascinating book!
Review: While this book's main focus is a study of the differences between the Hmong culture, and American society, there is much about little Lia as well. Lia was born with a seizure disorder. Her family had a heartbreaking time, transplanting to the United States, and being expected to conform to an incomprehensible new culture, while trying to help their precious baby girl. My heart goes out to the Lee family. I found this deep and complex book fascinating. I've read it four times.

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Summary: From a kids point of view
Review: I read this book for a World Civilization class, and wasn't really looking forward to it. I was suprized when I actually started to like it. This book is the ultimate culture clash. It's interesting to see what human nature really is, if you don't understand something, you find it annoying and stupid. Instead of trying to learn and step out of your normal comfort zone. In "The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down", the doctors and other people that worked at the hospital thought that the Hmong people were stupid, and the Hmong thought that the Americans were stupid.

For a person my age, I'm not sure I would recomend this book. I'm sure they would learn from in, but not sure they would find this as a fun read. The only reason I would of ever read this book is because I had to for my class. But if people want to learn, and have an alright time doing it, I would recomend this book. But for people who like fiction, I don't think that you'll like this at all.

For Adults, I would recomend this book to anyone. It really is like nothing that I've ever read before. Which is probably because I've never really written anything like this before. As I said before, this book would be great for anyone interested in human nature. These two cultures knew nothing about eachother, but just because of the barrier the first thing that they did was not have any respect for eachother. (This has to be 500 words....)

This is a really well written book, but I think that I gave it four stars instead of 5 because at times it got a little bit boring. Maybe this is because I'm not really that mature, but I fell that the writer knew too much information about the topic. And gave it all to us. Sometimes when I was reading it felt like I was being force fed information. Like why do I need to know this? How does this relate to the story. But maybe for adults this seemed more relevant.

Overall, this is a great book, and I would recomend it to anyone that is mature enough to enjoy it.

(Sorry Jim, I can't write anymore)

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Summary: Very Interesting, Even for a Hmong
Review: I am an educated Hmong woman. I was motivated to read this book by my older brother who has a degree in Anthropology. Before reading this book, I thought that I knew enough about my culture and that I didn't need to read a book which tries to explain my own culture to me - yet, I have found the information in this book very interesting. I've learned new things about my own culture that I didn't know before, such as the perception of the Hmong through the American people. One thing that I especially appreciated about Anne Fadiman's work in this book is that she seems to give it as it is. For instance, she would even quote some one when they responded negatively towards the Lee family. Another is that she would talk about how Hmong people would do such weird things and then explain the reasons so that it just doesn't leave the reader wondering. I haven't read other books written about my own culture, but even so, I can rate this book as excellent.

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Summary: Mind opening experience
Review: Prior to reading Fadiman's book, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the Hmong culture. One of my most treasured friends is Hmong - we met in college and Yer has always amazed me with her all American appearance and attitude that can be so totally overcome with her Hmong culture. Reading "The Spirit Catches You..." brought this world so much closer. While it's very easy to read, and the story grabs you and pulls you in, it is also a crash course in Hmong culture and history. Unless you know someone who is Hmong, it's hard to understand how tangible their culture, language, history etc... is all tied together. Fadiman does a great job of tracing the tangled knot of many of these threads. You won't come away from this intriguing novel without feeling like your world view has just burst threw another layer of understanding.

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Summary: My Review
Review: The Book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a very good book to read when you want to learn about how different our world is and the types of cultures there are. This book was mostly about how the Hmong people -a tribal people from Laos- deal with their lives in the U.S. and all the changes they can and can't make. It is based upon a family that emigrated from Laos and was then placed in Merced. Their youngest daughter was born with a severe, life-threatening case of epilepsy and throughout the book, the family struggles with the doctors at the Merced County Hospital and the treatment of their precious daughter.
It taught me that the things that I would normally find weird or wrong all have a lot of meaning behind them and that no one has the right to judge too quickly. The people in Merced didn't take the time to get to know any of the Hmong people and understand their way of life. If the locals, especially the doctor residents, took the time to understand why the Hmong did what they did, there wouldn't be so many misunderstandings between the two cultures. In Chapter 17 (titled "The Eight Questions"), a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist named Arthur Kleinman offers eight simple questions that doctors should ask their patient about what they thought their sickness was. Some of the questions are: What sickness does the patient have? How did they get this sickness? I think this was a smart thing for someone to make up to help the doctors understand where their patients are coming from. Most of the time the nurses and resident doctors think their patients are stupid and are bad at taking care of themselves and their families, when in reality, their patients are only doing what they know will help. For example, in Lia's case he parents didn't give her allif anyof the medications the doctors prescribed. Lia's parents thought they were giving her too much Western medicine. They thought it would be better to give her a little Western medicine and some Hmong medicine. Lia ended up being put in a foster home by the government because the doctors said her parents were abusing her since they weren't giving her the medicine prescribed.
This book really makes clear the distance and tension between the Hmong people in Merced and the resident doctors. Neither of the two really likes the other and since they have a language barrier, each thinks the other is stupid. The author makes the reader understand that the Hmong and the doctors don't have a clear way of communicating help each other out. It is rare in Merced that there are interpreters there to translate for doctors & patients and to help them understand the other's culture. When Fadiman interviews the doctors that took care of Lia, they talked about the hard times when they didn't have an interpreter in the hospital. The Hmong people all tried to speak as much English as they could and tried to show the doctor what they knew. But the doctors didn't know a word of Hmongwhich is strange, since the majority of patients they take care of are Hmong and didn't take the time to try to explain things in a way their patients might understand. I think in order for the author Anne Fadiman to write this book, she had to get an interpreter that was bicultural and bilingual so they could not only translate the words, but to help Anne say the right things in the presence of the Hmong people.
The way Fadiman wrote the book, she made the reader understand the frustrations she had dealing with the two different cultures. In a way, both the Hmong and the doctors seemed to be arrogant because they didn't want to learn the other culture. The doctors believed the Hmong should learn Western medicine because they were now living in the United States and not Laos. The Hmong have always been a people that try to keep their culture going. They don't purposely put themselves in situations where they have to adjust to others' standards. That is why they have always run away from a culture that is trying to change them. In this case the Hmong were more or less forced to reside in the U.S. and if they would have known that this country would try and make them blend in, they would have avoided the move at all costs. Fadiman shows the struggle of the two cultures clashing when she interviews the different sides. When she interviews the doctors that took care of Lia, they talked about the hard times when they didn't have an interpreter in the hospital. The Hmong people all tried to speak as much English as they could and tried to show the doctor what they knew. But the doctors didn't take the time to try and explain things in a way their patients would understand.
Overall, the book was an opening to the Hmong culture. It showed how people need to try to understand one another and not be narrow-minded.

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Summary: Let the spirit urge you to read this book
Review: What happens when Western medicine comes smack up against the Hmong family of a child with severe epilepsy? Not good things. The two cultures are completely opposite from each other in the way they view health, illness and treatment, one grounded in left-brain Western tradition, the other based on spirits and wind and amulets and traditional holistic and animistic practices.
This painstakingly researched account of cultural dislocation should be read by every healthcare provider.

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Summary: Good read...
Review: I think this book was pretty good.. I am also Hmong and I usaully don't read books about our own culture, but I couldn't put this book down once I started. It opened up my eyes into seeing what Americans saw when Hmong first arrived.

I also felt frustration with both sides, but especially back then, when the older Hmong generation were so wary of American doctors, along with the language difficulties. But I still feel that if the doctors would have tried harder at trying to understand the parents and finding competent interpreters, especailly when this case was this bad, things would have been different.

And now there are competent interpreters out there, and anything like this from a doctor would be inexcusable, and Hmong parents are not this uneducated any longer because their English speaking children are leading their way.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for doctors
Review: This book describes everything that may go wrong with patients from another culture. It makes visible all the things you take for granted, the things that are not automatically understood by people from an other culture. This books gives a voice to frustrated Hmong AND frustrated doctors. Easy to read, a catching story.