Summary Of The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down By Anne Fadiman

The Anne Fadiman book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, is about a Hmong (an East Asian ethnic group) family, the Lees. The Lee family find it difficult to navigate through the American healthcare system that is being offered to them in Merced, California. They go from traditional Hmong health management in Laos, to a place where biomedical, science-based treatments. And when the Lees are faced with having to rely on western medicine to properly care for their daughter, Lia Lee’s severe epilepsy, this conflict of cultural resolution is brought to the light. This leads to distrust of doctors by the Lees and a development of unempathetic care by the doctors for the Lee family. The book is written in an alternating fashion, where every other chapter is a discussion of Hmong culture and the Laos war, in which America played a part. Fadiman’s decision to present the book this way, helps the reader …show more content…
A cross-cultural interpreter would have been able to tell the family about the importance that medication can play. One could have easily been provided. They also could have easily provided an in-home nurse to give Lia her medicine, but instead they thought that it was better to place Lia in foster care away from her parents as though they were poor influences on the young girl. If the Ernst had listened to the Lees' culturally influenced description of Lia's sickness, they could have gained an understanding of the Lee’s concerns and the would have been able to confront them accordingly. Recognizing their point of view would have built trust, that is essential for good doctor-patient rapport. While Fadiman had a close relationship with the family, she can still misjudge situations, because she is American and white. Just because she understands that cultural miscommunication happens, does not mean that she will prescribe it to all cases, even with