Anne Fadiman 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down'

Anne Fadiman 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down'

Introduction

The author of the book, Anne Fadiman has presented a very interesting story related to the encounter of a Medical Community from America with a Hmong family. The study is based on the clash of practices and beliefs of these two groups belonging to different cultures. The study presents some very basic issues related to humanity and the progress that science has been able to make in the present times (Fadiman, 1997). The paper presents an analysis of how language and communication played a role in what happened with Lia.

Discussion

Lia Lee's sister has this and other stories in a writing exercise in school, in Merced, California. Lia Lee is the star of 'The Spirit catches you and you fall', by Anne Fadiman. The writer does just the opposite that a teacher perplexed misuse of the past tense, and immersed in the story of a Hmong family in California, when their culture clashes with the U.S. amid Lia's disease (Fadiman, 1997).

'The spirit catches you and you fall' - is the term used to define a Hmong seizure. But how do doctors explain to parents of Lia who has epilepsy and no spirits involved? How to treat Hmong Lia when doctors do not touch their patients? How to describe what happens in your brain when the Hmong have no concept of 'brain'? The fact that no autopsies Hmong have a name for the organs of the human body or the absence of physical contact between doctor and patient is only the beginning of a series of meetings between hospital doctors' frustrated Merced and Lia's parents -who do not speak a word of English, as it enters her first seizure (Fadiman, 1997).

Lia Lee suffered the first ...