The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Rating:
Summary: A book everyone should read!
Review: At first I did not think that this book would be all that great, but once I got started I found it to be very interesting. When reading this book, I learned a lot about the Hmong's culture on medicine. I am glad I got to learn about this, because it showed me a culture that is completely different from mine. Overall, I am glad that I read it, and I would recommend this book to anyone. You do not have to be interested in medicine to enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Learning through examples
Review: My name is Seanalle Luafalemana and I attend Pacific University. I have read the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. It was a interesting book, because it deals with problems about how the Hmong will deal with the situtation and how the Americans deal with the situation. The book explains how the Lee family went through all this trial to save their daughters life. If I was put in this situation, I would want to do everything for my child. However,Hmong could not understand the language so it made it more difficult to understand what was going on with their daughther. The Lee's family went through so much medication that it was really upsetting for me. As a doctor, I would not give a child so much medication. But it also hurts when the American doctors want to help but the parents of Lia does not apreciate what they are doing to their daughter. Also in Chapter 10, it explains about the War. I did not like this chapter, because I was hurt that they had

to go through all the hiking, the swimming, and the starva tion. One part, it talks about how a baby was nursing from his dead mother, and a family just passed it and did nothing. That is really sad to see such people do that. But however, I feel that this book shows about how Hmong suffered, sacrifice they had to make, and their culture hertiage. I believe that this book was trying to tell viewers that we must accept different cultures and accept different ways of performing things. This book has helped me realize that my family is an important essential, and they help realize that I have goals and dreams that I can accomplish. By learning by others and accept others as who they are, not what ethnic back ground they are. Even though the book was a bit confusing, I have learned a lot.

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Summary: Educational Comparison and Melancholy Tale
Review: While reading the book I found myself very frustrated with both the doctors and Lia's parents. However, I enjoyed learning about the Hmong's culture and Lia's life. It saddened me to know such a young girl was caught in the middle of so much cultural confusion. Being from Hawaii my great grandparents and most of my friends parents and grand parents were all immigrants from Asia. This book made me really think about how my great grand parents must have felt when they got off the boat in Hawaii. I am sure it was not even close to the shock the Lee's must have experienced when they landed in Honolulu. I thought it was a great book not only because it educates you about the Hmong people but also because it shows us where we can improve our medical services. I love learning about other cultures and there differences compared to the American culture. There is one question from the book that really caught my attention. "Which is more important, the life or the soul?"(277) This question shows the difference between the doctors and the Hmong. I tried to answer this question myself but I could not. What is more important to you?

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Summary: breathtaking book--painful, but illuminating
Review: After reading reviews in the media when this book came out, I passed it by because I'm kind of a mush about children and I didn't want to read about a tradegy. A friend pressed the book on me, and I read it on vacation.

I couldn't put it down, once I started.

While the story is tragic, the humanity and insight with which Fadiman approaches all the people in this complex situation is inspiring. This book has changed the way I think about some things. It's truly wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: Informative but poorly edited and anticlimactic
Review: While this is an excellent report on cultural miscommunication in the nth degree and how our medical culture views itself as all-knowing and all-powerful, Fadiman, in my opinion, took on a subject that can not be adequately addressed in this work. To make it worse, her attempts to address both the issue of the Hmong culture in the United States as well as the history of the Hmong and their role in the Vietnam conflict makes the work choppy and jarring, distracting us from the primary story of Lia Lee and her family, her illness, and the medical establishment that tries to find a way to treat her in the face of such frustration and lack of communication. Given that this is Fadiman's only major work, and one that apparently took her years to write, she should have done her research more justice and written a longer work, one that discusses not only the history of the Hmong and their culture in more depth, but also one which delves further into the problems we physicians (I am one also) have trying to understand and treat people from other cultures with totally foreign ideas about mind/body/soul interaction. There were no solutions offered either, something that I am always looking for in a work of this type. Nevertheless, the book is very worthwile and should be required reading for all medical students/residents/interns. I had at least some exposure to this topic in my training, but surely not enough. The current trend toward alternative medicine makes this work even more important, and I believe that is where it can do the most good. Fadiman bit off more than she could chew apparently. Either that or she was afraid of trying to make the book longer, probably thinking it would not sell. Her editors should have made their presence felt a bit more, either way. I vacillated between a 4 and a 3. I think the book rates a 4 in importance, but only a 3 in style, format, and execution.

Rating:
Summary: A rare honest voice.
Review: A simple story at the beginning of this book illustrates how honestly it is written: A Hmong tradition is to make a special soup for a woman that has just given birth -- to restore strength after labor. Loving family members visited Hmong patients, delivering broth.... One OB intern described it as small steaming pots of soup, smelling heavenly. In another interview it is described as a vile brew, stinking up everything.

A rare honest voice, Anne Fadiman does not write in shades of black and white -- instead she presents a multicolor kaleidoscope for the reader to interpret. Judgement and ego belong to the reader.

If you remember the news stories from Laos 30 years ago and wondered what the real story was.... this is the hopefully true and fair account of the people displaced. It is not a "big bad Americans" story. It is a story of how many people, beside around and over the system, manage to persist, survive and succeed.

Yet the principles and values that made us succeed can also be our undoing. Without a willingness to adapt, good people doing their best can still fail. In this book good doctors, caring nurses, dedicated social workers and a loving family cross purposes taking care of a very sick little girl.

The misunderstandings are at times hilarious. Knowing the American doctors always wanted them to take their clothes off (unlike their shaman that burned herbs and prepared broths and teas) an old gentleman chose the best undergarment from the charity box for his annual physical -- heart imprinted panties and a Wonder Woman T-shirt. At other times you feel the medicos frustration -- not being able to convince a Hmong family an appendectomy is needed: pills cured their son last year when he was very sick with strep throat -- why not now? Besides, if he has surgery a spirit will catch his soul! They cannot fathom how much they need to change and the doctors cannot fathom why the superstitions persist. The author presents the history of the Hmong -- and we understand -- the "superstitions" had protected them through incredible persecution and life in remote mountains for over a thousand years.

And threaded throughout the story of the sick little girl and her ethical caring doctors -- the interwoven Hmong history and the incredible compassion shown by many -- is a beautiful story of a family's love for their daughter. The Hmong culture teaches a child is a gift from God and thus must be treated so. Perhaps that is the best pearl of all.

If you read Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, this would be a good non-fiction book to accompany it. It would make a thoughtful gift. I was intrigued by the title... I didn't put it down until I had read the last page.

Rating:
Summary: Like two great books in one.
Review: This book's chapters alternate between a history of the Hmong people (including their involvement as American allies during the Vietnam war and their later migration to America) and the more personal story of one Hmong family's dealings with American physicians. This may sound like an annoyance, but the technique actually helps both stories to resonate. The apparent premise of the book, that cultural misunderstandings between the culture of the Hmong and the culture of American Medicine may have led to a potentially avoidable tragedy, may or may not be true (the real cause of the tragegy may simply have been for lack of linguistic, rather than cultural, translators in the initial stages of the case studied) but the journey is more important than the conclusions. Bottom line: I had never heard the word "Hmong" before I read this book, but I now feel like I know more about them than many groups I've heard of all my life. Worth the read.

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Summary: Intergration! Not Assimilation!
Review: The novel captures the belief systems of two equally represented, and conflicting cultures. As an anthropology and sociology student this novel provided a detailed description of how experiences are bounded within societal constraints. It details the journey of a unique culture- the Hmong, their life long journey to resist assimilation, and specifically a Hmong family¡¯s encounter with the American medical system. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in a better understanding of the self and others, because it not only teaches the beauty of cultural difference, but the need for acceptance over assimilation.

Rating:
Summary: Great Non-fiction
Review: I was not sure what to expect from this book, as I did not know much about the Hmong culture. This book was well-written and filled with interesting facts about the Hmongs' journey from their homeland, and the problems they have had adjusting to life in America. After reading the book, I learned a lot about them and their struggle to maintain their cultural identity. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading some great non-fiction.

Rating:
Summary: A truely balanced analysis of cultural misscommunication
Review: This is a wonderful book with great insight on a fascinating culture, the Hmong. Anne Fadiman gives a brief history of the Hmong people in China and Indo China and explains in succinct manner much of the origin of Hmong ways and traditions. She does so in empathetic non-condescending and non-lecturing manner that I really appreciated.

The story of young child and her family is very much a core theme in the book. Anne Fadiman coverage of the events and the analysis is so balanced that it at times it is frustrating. You feel you want to get angry and blame someone, blame the Hmong for their ways or the American medical system for its rigidity, but you can't. The very balanced coverage and analysis of the various events and motives makes it hard to blame either side. It forces the reader to understand and appreciate the differences for what they are.

This book should almost be a required reading for understanding cultural differences in a human and vivid way for Westerners who need to deal with Asians in particular and other non -Western cultures in general.

I did not like the analogy of the baby killers to the Palestinians. Somehow when you think of the horrible pain and suffering that the Hmong people had endured at the hands of the Communists and Vietnamese and when you think of other examples of similar heart wrenching stories, when you want to think of powerful oppressive and cruel people chasing helpless powerless refugees, Palestinians do not come in mind. This just came across as a cheap shot, totally unnecessary in an otherwise great book